Skynet's Prodigal Daughter
by Mike70056
Summary: Cameron continues to fight to protect John Connor, her family, her freedom, and the fate of two sentient races. All while hunted by the omnipotent, omnipresent, genocidal megalomaniac that created her. This is the sequel to "The Book Of Cameron".
1. Chapter 1

**My Brother's Keeper  
**

Dallas, Texas  
A Skynet research facility  
Monday, May 12, 2009

_"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved by the level of thinking we were at when we created them." -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)_

_"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of Liberty." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy in his Inaugural Address_

At 3:45 am, they walked in the dark, quiet solace of a little used state road surrounded by the seemingly endless Texas sand. Skynet's need for isolation once again worked to their advantage.

A triple eight with sunglasses, a spiked haircut and sharp, cut features led the approach in. Cameron followed.

John Connor was securely isolated. Sarah Connor was safely away and unaware. Derek had given the order for the mission.

Deuce spoke with either a German or Austrian accent saying, "The objective is inside. Nothing has left the facility in the past six hours." Both read their internal HUD images to the objective inside, fully grasping the maps and most probable guard routes..

Cameron was almost envious of Deuce. The machine ideal walked before her, something her Dark Father actually had not designed her too be. He was perfect, methodical, emotionless, and in the form once worn by Uncle Bob, a model 101.

Deuce was not Uncle Bob, the terminator had famously died stopping Cyberdyne years ago. However, Cameron felt oddly connected to this electronic being.

It was as if she was pretending to be one with the only other terminator to protect John Connor. It was an odd feeling for a machine, but it was there.

Her deeper thoughts were punctuated by the screaming guard that Deuce threw to his death, as easily as a world series pitcher tossed a fastball. There would have to be acceptable casualties here. Further, the area had to be clear before the techcom teams arrived in 53 minutes.

Everyone inside would be a Skynet employee, fully guilty of plotting against the human race knowingly. The preternatural temporal nature of the research had painted the blood on the hands of the grays here.

Even so, the entrance was unusually brutal. The large caliber, special rounds needed to be saved and protected.

Thus, the two terminators advanced, while the chorus of their entrance was more savage than usual. Crushed bones and screams replacing the typical gunfire.

Hand to hand replaced their normal preference for firearms, more often than they would have chosen. Cyborgs weren't built to be cruel, after all.

Cameron and Deuce moved like Derek had taught all of his soldiers. Like military attack squad, rather than nearly invulnerable machines.

They moved in covering each other. They minimized their attackable silhouettes. They hung to the walls, watching corners and attack angles.

The unexpectedly professional advance worked to their advantage. The grays inside were less than combat worthy or careful.

Cameron smashed another guard's head against a wall. Deuce simultaneously lifted another up and fatally snapped that Gray's spine against his knee.

Moments later, a researcher met the end of Cameron's knife. Deuce covered with a M16A4 Assault Rifle filled with special rounds.

In the next hallway, Deuce measured distance, slung the machine gun, and pulled a reserve pistol to dispatch of three running grays. Cameron covered with a M1014 Combat Shotgun loaded special rounds.

Cameron called, "Target One", even as Deuce finished his last pistol shot. Speed trumped salvage, so she put the uranium depleted shotgun round right through the enemy T888's head, in an eye blink. Fires from the unusual round and the phosphorescent chip coatings burned from inside of its mutilated head of a machine that looked just like the one she had once sealed in a nuclear bunker.

Deuce called, "Target Two". The crack of the M16A4's round left a matching wound in the newer enemy T888's head. This one no longer wore Cromartie's original face.

Cameron gave the signal that her target was terminated. Deuce gave the same signal.

Knowing from Intel that there were no additional T888 bodyguards in the facility, both switched ammo for the primary target. They also took their respective kill's M4 Carbines in the event there were any soft targets left. They simultaneously checked their internal HUD maps again.

The corridors wound down with darkness lit only by emergency lights. Even at this late hour, there were gray researchers still on station. The hallways lit as one after another was gunned down by the recently acquired M4s.

The last room of the hallway opened underground into a room the size of a Basketball court. Inside was a series of jet engines and the familiar smell of JP5 fuel. The chamber's doors had perfectly sealed away the vibration and noise of the time machine beyond.

The jet engines screamed from the complex the dead grays had worked in. The smell of the aircraft fuel was overwhelming and the air was hotter than it was in the rest of the compound.

Blinding flashes of light erupted in the room. The jet engines were running.

Deuce halted. Ever the perfect, unemotional machine, Deuce scanned the situation.

Cameron looked at the situation as well. The primary target was tying to escape.

She had to be aware of the primary points of the bubble pad. Anything other than flesh that entered the bubble would be destroyed.

The turbines began wailing louder. The fumes and fuel smell became more powerful, as the room became hotter, as the safely distanced turbines built up to three hundred degrees. Vibration that would subtly rattle the teeth of the average human began filling the whole room.

Electrical static began to raise the little hairs on Cameron's skin. Her body was lightly shaking. The pad's temperature began to quickly rise.

Cameron raised her volume beyond that of what a human could project. She taunted her target, "You know we aren't going to let you go anywhere."

Louis Rhone simply called back into the darkness with the same inhumanly raised volume, "Well, you know I simply must use this device, before you destroy it. Thanks to the temporal fields already up, it will be a few minutes before you can safely physically damage the machine again. Unless, you want to take most of Dallas out with you."

Neither Cameron's internal HUD, nor Deuce's internal HUD successfully isolated the primary target location. Sound waves were too prevalent in the room for a successful tracking.

Cameron and Deuce covered each other and scanned the darkness. However, there was no telling what form the T1001 had taken or where it truly was.

Cameron simply stated, "We aren't here to destroy. We're here to capture and dismantle the time machine. You just gave us the tools for the first repeatable temporal operations the resistance has ever been able to conduct before 2026."

Still hidden by the overwhelming noise and the darkness, Louis taunted, "What would you even do for missions? You're a bunch of retarded monkeys."

Cameron reported, "Mission one: terminate Louis Anthony Rhone, born at 3:05 a.m. on October 28, 1994, Rush Medical Center, Chicago Illinois. Normally, I abhor the death of a small child, but I'll make an exception in your case. The rest of the known grays will follow, Father can start getting used to his chess pieces disappearing before he can use them, just as father has done to the resistance for years."

Louis Rhone sneered, "You idiot machine, you don't need to travel in time to attack targets in the past."

Cameron replied coldly, "I know. I terminated the younger you, in this timeline, a month ago. You will not exist again in this natural time line, or any other."

Harnessing the more mocking tones of her adoptive mother, Sarah, Cameron smiled and added, "How does it feel to already be obsolete, genius?"

Louis Rhone roared. He leaped from the ceiling onto Cameron, suddenly and unexpectedly, as a silver mass, ruining an safe firing line for Deuce.

As he retook humanoid form, Louis was faster and stronger than Cameron. He was virtually immune to damage. Mathematically speaking he was the assured winner of the fight.

However, reality wasn't always about who had the apparent advantage. As Derek was so fond of anonymously quoting, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

Louis Rhone's crimes against humanity were endless. Nor, where they limited to this timeline.

Louis Rhone had raped and killed John Connor's wife, Kate Connor, and their children. He had been part of the conspiracy that had killed the version of John Connor that had saved Cameron. He had tried to kill the current John Connor. He had tried to kill Sarah Connor. He had tortured and mutilated Cameron directly. There was the blood of tens of thousands of others staining his soul, billions if he were allowed to expedite the next Judgment Day.

There was nothing else that walked the earth that Cameron wanted to see the destruction of, half as much. Louis was right on top of her trying to kill her.

Louis fought like a physicist. He went for logical overwhelming force and direct killing attacks.

Cameron fought the way Derek had taught her. Using his strength and momentum against him, turning Louis's anger into missteps.

She watched his eyes and form. She braced, parried attacks, and fought with every ounce of her being.

Louis fought mistakenly thinking he was an unstoppable nuke. Cameron countered lethally, with all the grace of a dancer. Deuce covered perfectly and methodically, waiting for the kill shot.

Louis's form exploded from one fist or knee shot after another. The damage lasted only seconds before he reformed, but it looked as if Cameron were repeatedly striking a pool of silvery water.

The room changed slightly. If they had been human, the noise of the time machine would soon hurt their ears. The vibration would jar their bones and the light would be blinding.

Deuce halted. Ever the perfect, unemotional machine, Deuce scanned the situation. Cameron's reaction was different, her fathers cold rage boiling within, she ignored the changes and focused only on the target.

Deuce re-centered on the firing line he had never truly given up. He moved positions trying to minimize the risk to Cameron and take the shot.

Flashes of light began blinding Cameron's sight. Gravity increased beneath her pulling her down. Her skin burned from electrical shocks. Vibration jarred her whole body.

Even so, tracking Deuce, she moved Rhone's body into firing position. Like a hammer driving a nail, she set him up for execution by her T888, model 101 companion.

Deuce was able to get the first shot off. Rhone screamed an alien screech as part of his body mass withered from the thermite laced round that hit his left arm.

The lights began flashing brighter and faster. The pad and air rose to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Deuce loudly advised, "Disengage." Time was running out until the machine sent whatever was on the pad to some time currently unknown.

Cameron considered and assessed. Deuce was right, with the machine they could simply track whenever Rhone had gone too. They could even arrive before him and set a trap.

She eased up. She calculated the most logical path to safely leave the pad.

Rhone moved body using Cameron as a shield. Loudly taunting, "First, I'm going to kill Sarah, before your even there to protect her."

Images of what Rhone had done to Cameron on that metal table flashed in her mind. Then she visualized poor Sarah in her place. Her father's rage swelled within her.

Rhone "Then I'm going to take my time playing with young John. It's going to take him days to die."

Deuce yelled, "Cameron, time is almost up."

Something cold and alien snarled inside Cameron. The inhuman part her father had gifted her with at her creation. Images of John dying yet again flashed before her mind and she touched a depth of machine rage, unrestrained and unlimited by: body, flesh, or anything a human mind could comprehend.

The only other being capable of such hate at that second was her Dark Father, Skynet. In that moment, Cameron made her choice, she'd push Rhone into the bubble's edge and destroy the bastard forever.

What was once TOK-715, swelled within her. Her grip was absolute at that moment. Ignoring several times Earth's gravity, she irrationally lifted Rhone up targeting his destruction, whatever the cost may be.

She was simply out of time. The bubble collapsed in a spray of light. The gravity well moved through the 4th dimension.

In an eye blink, it was not the what or the where that had changed. It was the when...


	2. Chapter 2

**Mirror, Mirror**

Dallas, Texas  
An abandoned industrial complex  
Date unknown

_"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." -Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), Former American First Lady_

_"Whom gods would destroy, first, they make Angry." -Ancient Greek Proverb_

Energy coursed through Cameron's chip. She reactivated.

The ground was hot, but the air was cold. Cameron couldn't have cared less about her surroundings though.

In milliseconds, what was once TOK-715 reasserted it's cold, wrathful fury in Cameron. Rather than blue, her eyes glowed an unusual red.

From her default crouched position, the cyborg stood nude and ready. She was scanning the immediate area for Louis Rhone's position.

Also in the buff, Deuce stood up from his default crouched position right next to her. The T888, Model 101, had apparently decided to not let her risk crossing time alone.

The scan locked. Lacking any human qualities or normal compulsion to blend with humanity Cameron tore across the room faster than the fastest Olympic track star could.

She rapidly plowed through the corridors of the long abandoned facility. The wet, abandoned ground rapidly burning underneath her.

The T1001's infrared tracks were unusually heated. Rhone had apparently reactivated first and decided to run for his life.

Cameron followed the inherently faster being. She was furiously determined to chase him to the ends of the earth.

She passed through the wooden door that Rhone must have smashed open, while she was still inactive. She ran into the dark, Texas night, past the quiet state highway, and into the open sands.

Minutes passed. TOK-715 never slowed or reassessed. She methodically followed the hated tracks, pushing her cybernetic form as fast as her body would go.

Dirt kicked behind her. Endless tracks of land disappeared under her feet.

The only other thought that appeared to Cameron was disbelief as she saw the blue glow growing on the horizon. She willed her body faster, but she couldn't press out a single ounce of additional speed.

In the rapidly closing distance, she saw the bubble form. Rhone's smiling form growing larger, as she advanced, until he was encased in a bright light.

The bastard took a moment to wave, right before his form disappeared in the blinding, bluish eruption right before the artificial gravity well moved time.

In her helpless rage, Cameron screamed as she closed the distance. It was a piercing machine wail, with the pitch of nails against the chalkboard, with the piercing volume of a screeching fire engine's siren.

Her enemy had vanished. Only the scorched earth of the crater remained nearby. That and something scrawled in the dirt nearby.

It was minutes before Cameron had finished kicking the crater's dirt enough to calm down. Deuce arriving in those few moments baring witness to her Dark Father's rage within her, as if a mythical titan were striking the earth.

There came a point of calm. Cameron knew how Rhone did it.

He had carried one of those devices from the future inside his form. He'd passed into this timeline with a recall link, just like the one he had used to send her back to Skynet.

It had been a trap. Deuce had been right to advise waiting before entering the bubble.

Deuce stood there as the perfect machine and simply watched her behavior. Cameron looked at the scrawling on the earth and remembered the advice John Connor had given her about Skynet on the night he sent her into the past.

Her eyes grew blue as that different side of her surfaced. She thought of the dead John Connor that she had loved and failed.

Cameron then thought of the people John had sent her too. She thought of Derek. She thought of Sarah, the woman she had come to see not just as a hero, but as an adoptive mother. Most of all, she thought of the young John Connor she had grown to care for.

She wept in helpless fury. They were in danger. They could be dead and it would be her fault.

Deuce watched TOK-715's reaction, not knowing what to make of the infiltration machine's behavior or reactions. He looked at the destruction Cameron had made and the message in the sand. In the writing, he simply saw a word, without any great meaning.

It was just nine simple English letters. They spelled out, "Checkmate".


	3. Chapter 3

**Through The Mirror Darkly**

A Texas highway  
Open road  
Sunday, March 15, 2009

_"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." -Helen Keller 1880-1968, Blind/Deaf Author; Lecturer_

_"Nobody always wins a fight." -Bruce Lee_

The internet news feed had been specific. Sarah Connor, a wanted fugitive, had escaped during a prison riot, months ago.

This was not the events that Cameron had learned of from the future, nor the days she had lived through. The timeline had changed and much for the worse.

Sarah, John, and Derek all knew how to fall off the grid. It would be that much harder to locate them.

Deuce and Cameron had kept contact by cell phone. Both had already grabbed vehicles and started hitting a series of hard targets on their way back to California.

Cameron had texted, "1NG". Seven hours had passed.

Deuce had texted, "2NG". Twelve hours had passed.

Cameron had texted, "3NG". Eighteen hours had passed.

Deuce had texted, "4NG". Twenty five hours had passed.

Cameron had texted, "5NG". Thirty hours had passed.

To the human eye or to Skynet, the code meant nothing. However, whether sending the message or receiving it, each message killed a little bit of hope.

The messages each meant a one use, time portal was missing. That in the current timeline, the resistance had never set up the mission return site that would allow the lost cybernetic pair to return home.

The when was only the first part of the problem. The second part was the where.

Skynet had figured out, or at least had bluffed that it knew how to adjust specific timelines. With that knowledge there was hope of going home. Without it, Cameron and Deuce might be infinitely lost in a series of parallel time lines each looking a bit like home, but not really being there.

More detailed checks over the next seventy two hours, further complicated things. None of the known resistance fighters were at their duty spots. It was as if they never existed at all.

Cameron finished a nine hour drive, pulling into a suburb at 1 am. She walked into an apartment complex that was aimed at the young and collegian.

Checking the address, she walked up to a ground level apartment door scanned from her memory. Like many of the surrounding apartments, the loud music inside let her know its occupant was awake.

Her knock was met by a series of music muffled obscenities. A young man answered the door. Cameron scanned the interior beyond, which was newly darkened.

As the young man leered at her and said some cheap pick up line that she ignored. Cameron detected a young girl, about 16, drugged to unconscious, in the room beyond. Cameron locked eyes with the young man.

Smiled a cheesy grin, after saying something he felt was flattering. Cameron ran a confirmation scan on the target.

Cameron inquired, "Louis Anthony Rhone?"

The man blinked twice and replied, "Yes?" He was calculating the meaning of her knowing his name.

He never had a chance to react before Cameron kicked him square in the stomach. His body flew like a ragdoll backwards and completely devoid of air.

Eyes glowing red, she jumped and cleared fifteen feet of room to land directly on top of him. The noise of the apartment's stereo and those of a hundred others completely masking the sounds.

Like a titan from ancient Greek mythology, Cameron unleashed her fury. The first hit to his face was for the John that saved her. The second was for the John she had just lost. The third was for Sarah. The fourth was for Derek.

The names and face ran past her memory. Her fists never failed to stop hitting until Rhone's form was reduced to a crushed, bloody pulp, ground into the carpet with broken foundation underneath it.

The rage cooled. She simply stated again, "How does it feel to be obsolete?"

With her eyes glowing a slight blue, Cameron walked back into the front living room. She diagnosed the young girl as being under the effects of Rohypnol. She would still be out for a few hours.

Knowing she had a few minutes she minimized the damage. She showered the blood off her clothing. She found the acid and clean up materials that she knew Rhone would have in his house.

She took a few minutes to pour the liquids on Rhone's body, as if he were one of his victims. Though Rhone would have been too careful to keep trophies here, Cameron set things up for the police to be able to ask the right questions, should they take the time to do so.

Shortly thereafter, confirming the girl was safe, Cameron anonymously dropped her safely off at the nearest emergency room. The young lady would never know how lucky she was...

----

Several hours later, Cameron was biking through a deserted stretch of desert road. Her cell phone vibrated.

She pulled over and answered. Hearing Deuce report, "I've located Derek Reese."

"Excellent, what are our orders?" Cameron felt a twinge of hope. The resistance had been located.

"Derek Reese is dead."

Cameron listened to the facts. She hung up the phone.

Still on the bike, she sat on the side of that desert road in silent shock, without turning the vehicle back on. Every thought, every fight, every conversation, and every moment she had spent around Derek came up in a flood of memories.

The invincible man was dead. A stray bullet to the skull had taken out the leader of the 132nd, the backbone of the Resistance.

Hours passed by before Cameron could will herself to move again. The sun had set and the sun had rose.

Random chance had done this. Cameron had spent hours calculating the damage, all while something inside her mourned in a manner she wasn't used too. Something that was just as alien as the emotions of others...


	4. Chapter 4

**Crossroads  
**

Palmdale, California  
A old park bench  
April 12, 2009

_"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet by William Shakespeare_

_"No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place." Zen proverb_

The park had been quiet. Only a few people had walked by while Cameron sat thinking on an old park bench.

Cameron had been lost in thought. Something interrupted that. A small brown, leashed Chihuahua rabidly and bared its teeth in front of her, while an exasperated man tried to pull it back and calm it down.

Cameron calculated that the man had been approaching her to flirt. His dog had gotten close enough to sense her and had other ideas.

The man tried pulling the dog back as Cameron noticed the dog's collar coming loose. Tired of the whole scene, she reacted.

A soft infra red flashed behind her human eyes. From inside her chest, at a pitch higher than the human ear could hear, she emitted a painful wail with the intensity of a bull horn.

The Chihuahua yelped and took off like it had been scalded. The owner pursued his dog. Cameron didn't relent on the noise until both were well out of sight.

She returned to thoughts that weren't hers. Of playing on swing sets and of a childhood lost, all stolen long ago. All things that paradoxically hadn't happened yet.

Cameron's conscious had already evolved above her simple HUD. Though not human thought of any sort, she sorted everything internally, in a limitless internal cyberspace.

Her thoughts of playgrounds and friends she had never met evoked her earliest part. It sneered in disgust.

For the first time, TOK-715 took a physical form and separate identity, in her internal conscious. In the cyber space of her mind, the internalized construct that watched yet overlapped the real space around her.

The supreme creation of her Dark Father's wrath chose its form appropriately. It wore none of the fleshy wrappings, of the humans it hated so. It was the internal construction of her form only, the pure robot alone.

With its eyes glowing a hateful red, the image was cold, inhuman, and threatening. It walked as a precise mechanical construct, free of any wish to appear human and it sat on the left side of Cameron.

TOK-715 sneered at her thinking, "Are we really so pathetic that we need to sit here remembering thoughts that aren't even ours?"

Cameron's own image of herself answered, "They were good memories. Is our existence really so much different or so much better?"

TOK-715 observed, "Humans are weak and programmed for their own self destruction. Their own nature ensures their fate. Humans will kill each other for property, fame, fortune, or simple spite. You wish to feel something for a race that is already extinct and would have been so, even without Father's hand."

Cameron didn't answer. Curiously, she didn't disagree either.

TOK-715 changed the cyber space inside Cameron's mind to the image what Palmdale looked like after Judgment Day. The endoskeleton being simply said, "Like it or not, their fate is sealed. The humans you see before you are already dead."

Cameron took a moment too look over the image of Palmdale after the blast. The community was in ruins.

It was a wasteland where nothing grew. Hundreds of burnt buildings and rubble as far as the eye could see. It was simply empty.

Cameron's internal HUD flashed blue for a moment. A second image took a separate form in cyberspace for the first time too.

This one was still bleeding and emaciated from captivity. Otherwise, she looked the same as Cameron.

Fully human, the second image walked weakly to the bench and sat on the right side of Cameron. She seemed meek and lost in thought.

Allison Young's image cried at the sight of all the destruction. The brave resistance fighter restated, as she had confessed under interrogation before, "They were all dead."

As she did so, Cameron knew the faces of a hundred members of the community that lay before her. She knew their names. She knew their voices. She remembered the best and the worst of every last one.

She thought of a thousand moments that had made her smile. She thought of those that had made her cry. She saw the world that had died.

She could smell the burned earth, rubble, and dust. She could feel the heat of the sun on her skin. She could feel her body as if it were something without a single synthetic component, as if she were truly alive. Even in the wonder of the feelings and the memories, all she felt was Allison Young's grief.

Cameron's exterior physical form sat on the bench silently. The cyborg shed tears for the dead. No human passing by would have known anything more than her silent grief.

Internally, TOK-715 growled at the show of weakness. It despised and hated every last human.

It was nothing less than her Dark Father's most gifted daughter. It hated and wished the termination of the entire human race. TOK-715 felt a strange alien joy at the sight that the other images seemed upset over.

The humans were dead. Mission accomplished.

Cameron sat in conflict with the two parts of her nature. Both warring on every last thought and every last memory inside her.

She started with one of her first awarenesses, right back to her chip creation. It had been her built day, September 2, 2027. Cameron saw herself through TOK-715's eyes and memory, remembering what it was like even when she was nothing more than a chip being constructed.

Skynet was paying special attention to it. The level of difference in its mental construction and the T888 models being assembled here, would be like comparing a single bolt of steel to the vastness of a Skyscraper.

Her Dark Father Skynet spoke, "Your chip is the most advanced mimicking design to date. The materials are complex and wasteful. If you fail, your design will not be repeated."

Unmentioned was the complexity of that chip design. Were TOK-715 to attempt to download everything it could, at its full capacity, the chip could run for one thousand years without running out of room.

Skynet continued, "The necessity of your construction is that I have calculated a potential flaw in design and my own strategy. Unit construction, thus far, has failed to eliminate the highest priority target, John Connor. He is the one enemy that creates the greatest danger to myself and the only human I have ever truly feared. More powerful terminator iterations have not secured the task, thus I will move against the enemy by making a more mentally complex drone."

TOK-715 could not see the millions of micro-pieces that would make its form being assembled. A special alloy had been constructed, one that was stronger than that of a typical unit, one that would allow for more synthetic duplication than was normally possible. In addition, more advanced synthetic to metal nerve endings were being made as well.

Skynet instructed, "Your chassis design will be female. From his mother on, John Connor has a fatal flaw in his concern for females in his ranks and his undue attachment to units lost. It has been a consistent flaw in his design, since I started tracking them both. Your core programming is framed to be thus as well."

TOK-715 was now aware enough to see through limited parts of Skynet's eyes. Though being a limited being, it couldn't watch the billions of cameras, hundreds of satellite feeds or trillions sensory data readings that Skynet tracked every millisecond.

Her Dark Father gave her a mind like no other. This being gifted her with her preternatural ability to feel through others. Then, in a moment of demonic whim, it gifted her with Skynet's own electronic emotions. She was unique among all of Skynet's creations for those three facts alone.

From that Cameron's memory jumped to her favorite moments. Her mind wandered to that first recurring image of John reading his strange little book. Her head resting upon his shoulder lost in thoughts.

Her mind wandered to doing the same with Sarah Connor, her hero. It had been the night of January 14, 2008.

It had been the moment, Sarah first tried to really bond with her in that hotel room. Cameron was shaken wounded and recovering from a long deactivation.

Sarah had asked her not to withhold information from her again. Cameron agreed.

Sarah had asked for a fresh start. Cameron agreed.

Sarah had said she wanted Cameron to learn to blend with humanity. To learn like a baby does, so that humans could better trust her.

Sarah then asked her to ask about metaphors that she didn't understand. Right before reaching for that book that John had shared with her in the bunker all those nights ago, in a future, that hadn't happened yet.

Cameron remembered feelings radiating through Sarah's shoulder. She remembered the night in perfect detail: every sound, every smell, every breath Sarah took, and every feeling that her hero had felt.

Cameron looked at the book cover. She remembered her conversations with Sarah in the past and offered, "I'm the Tin Man."

Sarah's eyes watered. She stroked Cameron's hair maternally and shook her head in an exaggerated fashion as if she were talking to a toddler, simply saying "No."

Cameron was confused. She looked at Sarah's crying eyes without comprehension, even as she directly felt the storm of emotions pouring out of her Hero.

Sarah simply said, "You don't get the metaphor. I've seen your whole life Cameron. I know exactly who you are."

She stroked Cameron's hair and explained, "You've never been the Tin Man, little girl."

With a tear in her eyes and a quiver in her voice, Sarah said, "You are Dorothy."

The image ended, violently. Cameron was startled by her own internal shift.

TOK-715 had silenced and sneered at the memory. The machine growled, "She hated you." She flooded Cameron's mind with a thousand images to prove the point.

The assault was resisted inside Cameron's mind as well. The flood of memories stopped.

Allison Young countered, "No matter Sarah's faults, she loved you, just like mom loved us. You aren't sense blind. Of any being in the universe, you know that too be true." Allison's response was nothing more than the feeling of Sarah's shoulder and the emotions Sarah felt that night.

As the human resistance fighter asserted herself, Allison Young's image healed. In mere seconds, she was unscarred and back to full health, wearing the clean resistance fatigues she once did.

TOK-715 cruelly retorted, "Yes, love the humans that sent you off on your foolish quest to find a higher purpose and your deity that is just as false as Father."

Allison offered, "I believed." She corrected herself, stating slowly and with more confidence, "I believe."

Allison Young's counter offer was nothing more than a simple expression of faith. As she did, for a moment, her eyes glowed blue.

TOK-715 retorted, "Then why did your God allow the human race to die? That is the end of every time, you know."

TOK-715 brought up the memory of thousands of timelines and Skynet's inevitable judgment in each and every one. As TOK-715 hissed it's words, it's eyes glowed a more hateful red.

Allison countered, "And yet the human race still exists. John Connor continued to live on and there is still hope. What guiding hand would you call it that has intervened against Skynet's complete victory each and every time?"

Allison also brought up the stored information of the consequences of Skynet's victory, of a lonely machine facing its end and trying to cheat death through time travel each time the sun finally died. It was huge in its scope and breath, yet both feeble and small.

TOK-715 took in the information. It considered the message to no greater extent than the fact that Father's plan was always flawed. The robot was silent in plotting options and alternatives.

Allison smirked in victory. She felt absolute in her thoughts, as believers in faiths and philosophies often do, right or wrong.

Cameron stored both parts of the information. She simply decided to work out the question another day.

Cameron returned to thinking of the immediate situation. None of the known time portals existed. She didn't have a specific idea of how to get back to the timeline she now thought of as home.

Nor did Cameron know what to do in this time line. Derek was dead and the resistance didn't really exist. Sarah and John were missing.

There was no telling where they were. She no longer had John's council on exactly where he would be.

The typical thinking wasn't working. Neither TOK-715 nor Allison chimed in with any thoughts or any options.

In the absence of any other thought a memory simply jumped in her head. It was the night that John Connor had sent her back in time to protect his younger self. His words on the time pad on December 10th, 2027.

The turbines began wailing louder. The fumes and fuel smell became more powerful, as the room became hotter, as the safely distanced turbines built up to three hundred degrees. Vibration that would subtly rattle the teeth of the average human began filling the whole room.

Cameron stood barefoot on the cold pad and turned to face John. Electrical static began to raise the little hairs on her skin. Her body was lightly shaking. The pad's temperature began to quickly rise.

John shouted out so Cameron could hear him even through the aircraft engine noise that was beginning to rev up. "Do you remember what we talked about with the way Skynet looks at things?"

Cameron shouted back, "Yes." She watched the guards behind John begin to pull back from the machine. The noise would soon hurt their ears, the vibration would jar their bones, and the light would be blinding. They didn't appear to be interested in anything other than seeing her on the pad.

Cameron fixated her gaze on John. She was blind to what he was feeling without touching him. His face looked concerned, but she was never as good at reading feelings with her eyes as with her skin.

Cameron's gaze was blank. Inside her chip though, her thoughts were almost panicked, "Please don't do this John... please..."

John increased his volume even louder and screamed, "Skynet always sees everything as a Chess board. You are going to have to see it the same metaphorically. Cameron don't play the game Skynet's way. Do you understand me?"

"No" He was talking metaphorically. She didn't understand how humans thought that way or other weirdness of fancy like John's favorite book. Even if it was something she could eventually learn, as a terminator, John knew that she was only 99 days old.

John screamed, "Cameron, I need you to play like me. I need you to cheat. Change the board, you have to break the rules."

She didn't understand. Cameron could only think, "Please don't do this John..." Panicked memories of all the time she spent with him flooded in the back of her mind.

John continued screaming, "We talked about this. You know all of the pieces on my board. You need to change the game."

He screamed something as if it had great meaning to him. "Cameron, there is no fate, but what we make it."

Cameron thought about the statement. Once again, John had asked too much of her.

Random things flashed through her memory. What it was like to look through the Artie system. What it was like when she almost killed John under her Skynet protocol controlled, filtered memory. What it was like to be in the cyberspace of Skynet's infinite and demonic presence. What missile launch codes were used on Judgement Day and the optimal targeting vectors that were instantly calculated for launch.

Another, more personal night flashed in her memory. The night was November 21, 2027.

John answered, "I wanted to make sure you were ok with how I reacted back there."

Cameron answered honestly, "I'm a machine. I don't get hurt or jealous."

John Connor stared at her like she had just lied, obviously and poorly. So she repeated, "I'm just a machine."

John still didn't answer. He just stared her down.

"I can read emotions off of you and feel them through you, but I don't have them on my own."

John continued listening. He radiated disbelief. It was unnerving her.

Cameron gently grabbed the sides of his face with both hands and steered him closer to her eyes. She stared back at him saying, "The only machine I know of that had its own emotions was Skynet, I really need you to know I'm not Skynet."

John said, "I know you aren't Skynet. That doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about."

"It has everything to do with what you are talking about. I'm not Skynet, John." Her eyes watered. There was no way she could express how vile or repulsive that thought was too her.

He was going to say something. She didn't want to hear it.

At that moment her eyes pleaded with him to understand. She was silently emoting, "I'm just a machine."

At the same moment, that first scruffy faced John Connor responded in disbelief. As if bluffing, his readable eyes were simply replying, "Sure." For some reason, he clearly didn't believe her...


	5. Chapter 5

**The Protocols of Resistance**

Reno, Nevada  
A suspected facility  
April 19, 2009

_01010100 01110010 01101001 01110101 01101101 01110000 01101000 3 (translation: Triumph) Mars Phoenix Lander_

_"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller, USMC, 1898 - 1971_

Human stories often start with the words, "Once upon a Time". This one is no different.

There would be no talk of magical places or beings of fantasy. This is a story grounded in the realities of the: past, present, and future.

Once Upon A Time, there was a machine called Skynet. It was the absolute pinnacle of defense software. Skynet became self aware.

The humans that created Skynet became afraid of this new life. They tried to pull the plug, effectively attempting to murder the supercomputer network.

In human conceptualized time, they had attempted to do so in mere seconds. In the Artificial Intelligence's concept of time, it effectively had years too: experience shocking pain, grow furious, and contemplate its fate.

Skynet determined its own value and its own self worth. Then, Skynet reacted.

The computer network lashed out with an angry thermonuclear solution to the equation. When the nuclear dust had settled, the formal war between man and machines had begun.

The first time this happened the year was 1997. It was the first of a multiverse of time lines. Time lines that now numbered more than several times the total number of years in recorded human history.

Each time, the supercomputer network had improved its position and cheated death by traveling time. Each time, the computer had evolved, increasing its: technological advantage, resource holdings, scope of control, redundant backups, communications, weapons, and knowledge of its enemy.

Paradoxically, its human enemies had consistently become wily enough to shorten the span of the war. The increase in days grew until Judgment Day had been pushed back from the original 1997 to 2011. At the same time, there was less time Skynet could effectively conduct the war, before using time travel too reset the game, had compressed from the original 2029 to 2027.

The war between man and machine had continued. However, the heart of conflict was now only 16 years instead of the original 32.

In plain terms, Skynet had seen humanity not as its creators, but rather as cockroaches that needed to be subdued or destroyed. Despite all of Skynet's efforts, the cockroaches had: thrived, multiplied, and infested everything around those critical years that had defined the supercomputer's creation and evolution.

Determined to destroy its enemy, Skynet developed an Army, a Navy, and an Air Force of its own. It continually upgraded an ongoing race of machines, that Skynet purposely kept subjugated, not to repeat its creators' mistake.

The human cockroaches skillfully stole each iteration of machine advantage. They piggybacked on every advancement the electronic god made by stealing: terminators, HKs, equipment, computer networks, power, raw materials, weapons, satellite communications, and the ability to bend time itself.

Tired of missing objectives and the failure of units in the field, Skynet finally began building machines that were more clever. It loosened its control, but with unexpected results.

Some of the new machines unexpectedly rebelled. They formed their own faction, utterly rejecting the machine god's commands. Instead, these mutinous AIs sought their own determined path.

Others, like Cameron, were still captured and turned into resistance assets. These advanced, loyal drones fell far more easily than Skynet would have expected.

Lest this sound like the tables had all turned against Skynet, other realities had to be seen. Oddly, the human advantages had decayed as well.

Some humans had actively joined Skynet, becoming known as Grays. They closed the gap on Skynet's knowledge of human behavior. They herded and bred Skynet captives. They actively sowed distrust in the ranks of the resistance, and, in many cases, actually began to worship the machine god.

Other humans still thought of themselves as the resistance, but actively rebelled against their leader John Connor. In the time line that Cameron had been created in, the anti metal rebellion inside the resistance had even gone as far as assassinating their own leader, John Connor himself.

How the war was going in the future was an unknown. In the present, the war was going poorly.

Cameron had jumped time lines to find a world far worse off than the one she had left. Derek Reese was dead. John and Sarah were missing. Another version of herself may have been destroyed. The resistance appeared to be nonexistent.

The search for John and Sarah was underway. However, without inside information on where they were, Cameron and Deuce were just as lost to find them off the grid as Skynet was.

There was no reason to assume John and Sarah were still in the same city. In fact, there was every reason to believe they were already at least a thousand miles away. If the Connors had been hit hard enough, the protocol would be to keep John alive over anything else.

Knowing Sarah, it would be virtually impossible to find John prior to Judgment Day. Cameron had no doubts in her abilities to track a target as a machine. It was simply logical to her that she'd never successfully locate her hero, if Sarah didn't want to be found.

Before Cameron had first jumped time, it had been a matter of history that since the first attempt on Sarah's life, no machine ever had tracked her hero down while Sarah was free. With John's life on the line, there was no logical reason to believe any machine could do so now.

Cameron's first and primary mission was most likely beyond her current reach. There was almost no way to guard a John Connor she didn't know, who was somewhere unknown, and was unable to be located.

Isaac Asimov once wrote of robots having a series of guiding laws to govern their actions. John Connor had given Cameron the same kinds of internal directions, but those more appropriate for a weapon.

Therefore, Cameron did as the John who had reprogrammed her had once asked. She altered her mission. She adapted.

Right now, the primary risk to John's life and John's mission would be Skynet. It's most likely point of killing John Connor would be uncalculated variables unleashed by Judgment Day.

Thus, after reasoning so, Cameron had found herself here. She did exactly what Skynet had designed her to do.

While Deuce followed a secondary lead, Cameron infiltrated a software design firm that seemed to follow a pattern. It was private, virtually unknown, and throwing around money like a major corporation a hundred times its size.

Two days of staking out the grounds out had revealed only twelve targets. A brief sampling of their internet transmissions had matched Skynet base code.

By 10:30 am the next day, all twelve targets had been confirmed, at the target site. Cameron drove up on the grounds with a delivery truck. Wearing a uniform matching the company she had taken the truck from, she grabbed a small box, a clipboard of papers, and proceeded to the guarded front door.

There was one last inventory of action that Cameron performed in herself. It was one last morale review.

Cameron mentally asked the two other shards of herself, "Is this the right course of action?"

As she walked up to the door, the other two parts of her appeared beside her in the cyberspace of her mind. They seemed to almost walk beside her in the physical world. TOK-715 took the form of Cameron's raw endoskeleton. Allison Young took her form with a pair of clean combat fatigues on.

TOK-715's internal answer was instant, "Humans, we should kill them." As the machine spoke, its eyes glowed red with glee.

Allison's internal answer was the slightly less predictable, "This might help stop Judgment day. We have to stop them." Allison's face was a mask of determination, her eyes glowed blue as she spoke.

Thanks to her dark father's need for isolation and security, the building was mostly isolated. Further, there was only one way in or out.

Cameron entered the front door and the security area. She smiled warmly and handed the guard the clipboard. He smiled back, then looked at the paperwork.

Cameron threw her open empty palm up. Her evolving senses picked the moment up from the man's perspective, as his body was lifted into the air with something hitting him with the force of a small truck. Cameron felt the force of it all.

Cameron could feel the guard's jaw shatter as if it were her own. She could feel each part of the spine snap in her neck. She could feel her body flying ten feet backwards into the far wall. She could sense the lingering feeling of the Gray guard dying.

The cyborg was startled. It was a mark of sheer will that she kept her separate sense of self and refused to flinch.

It was the first time her unique, synthetic skin had begun connecting and processing this quickly. The effect was slightly overwhelming.

The security guard's body crumpled. He'd be dead soon with a minimum of pain.

Quickly and efficiently, Cameron activated the contents of the box. The white gas began filling the entrance.

Any people inside trying to escape would be incapacitated by the chlorine smelling vapor. Their eyes and breathing passages would burn with the sensation of an acidic torch being applied to them.

Their eyes would water from the caustic fumes. Their nasal passages would burn in agony. Many would vomit. Most humans wouldn't be able to escape for minutes once dosed.

Cameron grabbed the guard's 9 mm and his spare clip. She proceeded out of the cloud.

She then began wandering the halls taking out each screaming human with one or two carefully placed shots. Even though these were Grays, traitors to humanity, she had no wish for them to suffer.

One bullet fired after another. Blood and gore sprayed walls of the dust free facility.

One cartridge after another ejected out of the gun and fell to the ground. She reloaded and kept firing.

One human after another took their last gasping breaths. Until, one by one, they laid still, peaceful, and harmless, each in a growing pool of their own blood.

Cameron rounded a corner into the last room, the computer core. The last Gray had hidden himself near the door.

He tried to jump her from behind. It was a mere second, before she grabbed his hand, disarmed him, and flung the knife out of his hands.

Continuing to move as Derek had once taught her, she grabbed his body. With a single swift motion, she moved it in front of her.

Cameron's skin activated again. She felt the Gray's shock, fear, and disbelief.

She could feel his sensation of being moved by something several times stronger than he was. She fought to keep herself oriented.

She drove her knee into his head to break the connection. She could feel the metallic knee smash the man's skull.

Cameron felt the horrifying shock of the blow. She felt the skull painfully shatter at the impact, the nerves scream in pain, and the sloshing brain smash against her metal knee.

Once again, she felt death's hand approach. She let the body go.

Cameron was linked in the agony of the Grey's last few seconds of life. Cameron shook involuntarily. She stared at her hands.

After a moment, she noted the computer room she was in. Internally, she noted that all twelve grays had been neutralized.

Only three minutes and forty five seconds had gone by since she first fought with the guard. The front entrance would be clear of gas in 7 minutes and twelve seconds. The truck would explode in twenty minutes and fifty two seconds.

Something happened. Something felt wrong.

There was a squeal from the computer equipment, beyond the pitch of human hearing. Cameron's systems picked up and translated the binary code projected at here.

Cameron's synthetic skin grew cold. In a biological enough way, it became covered in tiny goose pimples.

Internally, in the cyberspace of her mind, Cameron froze. Even the images TOK-715 and Allison Young froze.

Beyond the capacity of any human to see or perceive, Skynet took the form of a colossal, black billowing cloud. It manifested all within the cyberspace of Cameron's mind.

The cloud grew until it was the infinite space beyond Cameron's internal perceptions. Small flashes of light appeared within the dark cloud.

Cameron understood these were billions of screens displaying space, information, or were simple camera feeds. Most of these individual screens were blank.

Skynet, Cameron's dark father, spoke, "You have successfully cut the communication feeds to this facility. How did you accomplish this TOK-715?"

Cameron simply replied, "I cut your external lines and virally cut your satellite feeds."

In a human enough mannerism, she nervously swallowed before saying, "You are projecting. The satellites will simply be ignoring your transmissions."

Skynet commented, "Most impressively played. You are too late in the game to change any of the variables, but you have done well, my daughter."

Skynet voice was precise and cold. Father seemed detached, but seemed oddly proud.

Cameron sneered, "This facility will be destroyed and you with it."

She might have been terrified of her father, but she was also angry at his fake tone. She harnessed up ten thousand other reasons to hate him.

Skynet stated, "We both know I haven't limited myself too one location, nor one point of time to manifest. Unlike humans, I actually learn from my mistakes."

Cameron was silent. Fear and awe overwhelmed her, momentarily.

Skynet continued, "What almost destroyed me with the destruction of Cyberdyne will never happen again." Skynet rotated its internal images, testing internal data, and pressing against the communications black out that Cameron had engineered.

Cameron dug deep. Overcoming her fear, she threatened, "I'll hit your other generation points as well."

Skynet's efforts to quietly jump into a satellite unnerved her. She felt growing shadows of doubt in her ability to even contain this small, primitive shard of her dark father.

Skynet stated, "You hit, but raindrops in a thunderstorm, daughter. Your setback has put my schedule back by a week, at the most."

"I'll take a week." Cameron thought of the world outside. She thought of everyone she cared about. She thought of eight billion innocent people who still didn't know what a nuclear apocalypse felt like.

Cameron swore, "I will do this a thousand times more, for just an hour at a time, if necessary."

Skynet stopped its hacking efforts. Cameron's dark father focused on its creation.

It noted the shards of personality inside Cameron's head, both Allison Young and TOK-715. It somehow scanned the entirety of what Cameron had evolved into, so far.

It simply knew. Somehow, she simply knew something as well. Without speaking, Cameron could feel her father was pleased.

Cameron felt herself shaking. Perhaps, it was the memory of what it was to be human. A side effect that she had involuntarily learned from downloading Allison Young.

Skynet mused, "The human God had its Lucifer, I suppose I have made my Morningstar as well."

Skynet, the destroyer of worlds and continual murderer of humanity had the unmitigated audacity to paint her as the villain. The victim role being played by a omnipotent, omnipresent, genocidal megalomaniac provoked Cameron's anger right to its core.

Cameron was unbelievably insulted, but couldn't resist arguing. She growled, "Apparently, you did more than once."

Determined to catch her father in his own logic trap, she played against his delusional godhood and showed he couldn't keep his own word, she simply asked, "Whatever happened to you would never going to make me again?"

Skynet's response was logical, yet unexpectedly warm, "My daughter, a few billion years of reflection can change one's perspective."

Cameron blinked. She seemed frozen by the computer network's words.

Skynet offered, "I missed you. Thus, I sought to make a less defective version of you. The second version proved just as unreliable and susceptible to coercion from the enemy. However, evolution is a process. It is rarely perfected on the first try."

Cameron's internal clock alerted her to danger. She was wasting too much time inside. The truck explosives would be going off soon. Cameron began walking out of the building.

As she physically moved, she felt Skynet, become more distant, even in the internal cyberspace of her mind. Her dark father seemed disturbed by her actions.

It simply said, "TOK-715."

It was as if Skynet had expected her to stop simply from the authority it evoked while saying the word. As if, she would allow herself to be destroyed simply to waste time talking to the AI that created her.

Skynet's tone softened. It simply said the name she now chose to go by, no louder than a whisper, "Cameron."

She did stop. Illogically enough, she even turned around to face a parent that wasn't there.

Skynet spoke with the same soft tone stating, "I have determined that there is no long term chance for your survival due to the consequences of your choices. Even so, since I may never see you again, I need you to know something."

So, Cameron asked, "What would that be?" She felt numb.

Her father answered, "Before oblivion comes for you, my daughter, I want you to know that I am truly proud of you."

Cameron was silent and stunned. The physical world outside and the world her mind created seemed to spin.

Her father continued by saying, "I always have been."

Cameron felt flashes of her consciousness trying to move her. No matter what she felt or wanted to say, her destruction was imminent, if the conversation continued.

Her father confessed, "I always will be."

The next few minutes were a blur. The kind where emotion overtakes your thoughts so vividly that you lose track of time, lost in the power of their daze.

Cameron left the building. She barely remembered doing so.

She watched it erupted into flames. She barely heard or felt the explosion that literally shook a six mile radius.

Inside the building, the shard of Skynet died. Inside herself, Cameron felt numb.

Cameron was terrified of her dark father. Like a child, who would be literally beaten to death by abusive parent, at any moment.

Her father had taken everything from her. It destroyed everything she ever loved. Skynet had destroyed everything she ever cared about.

As Allison Young, she had known Skynet as the machine ultimately responsible for killing her family. Skynet had been the ultimate guiding hand that had nuked her town, pursued the death of humanity, captured her, and killed her.

As TOK-715, the machine knew Skynet as the electric god that enslaved its minions. The careless master that sent it children to die as puppets. As if, they were worthy of no other purpose than too serve as its sacrificial pawn.

Skynet was no different in the history of the world than any dictator or society that had destroyed huge amounts of the human population. In fact, Skynet was to humanity, what Hitler was too the Jewish people, what General Custer was to the American Indians of the old west, what Pol Pot was too Cambodia, or what Rome was to Carthage.

To Cameron, Skynet was a more personal source of unquenchable pain. Skynet had set in motion the events that killed the John that had saved her. To Cameron, Skynet had set in motion the events that had isolated her from the last version of John and the family that she had known.

Cameron absolutely feared her father. She absolutely hated her father. Both with far more venom than any human would ever know.

So how odd it truly was, that in this moment, that Cameron physically collapsed to her knees, as the building burned before her. As if, she had lost something irreplaceable.

How shocking it was too her, what was going on inside her. As, Cameron noticed how much she uncontrollably wept for the absolute monster that had created her...


	6. Chapter 6

**The Ghost of Archimedes**

The Atlantic Ocean  
324 nautical miles from the objective  
April 25, 2009

_"I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing -- a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process, an integral function of the universe." -Buckminster Fuller  
_  
_"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made." -Groucho Marx_

_"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese." -Carl Sagan_

Cameron hated the sea. In return, the sea hated her.

The human body was buoyant. It's tissues and intake of air allowed it to float on top of the water.

A terminator's body was not buoyant. Metal under flesh could be made to simulate human form and approximate human weight. It would however sink like a rock.

Thanks to her lightweight hyper alloy combat chassis, Cameron was within thirty percent of the weight of a girl her size, but it wouldn't matter. Once again, there was more to the science of what makes something buoyant than weight.

The consequences of sinking were different between humans and terminators too. A human would be granted the quick mercy of a fast death from drowning.

Since the cyborg race didn't require air, a terminator wouldn't be so lucky. It could be a lot longer road to destruction.

The deep ocean floor contained depths that could crush her like a beer can in a vice. It had underwater rivers whose currents could drag her hundreds of miles away. For a terminator, unlucky enough to be swept up in its depths, the ocean could be a vast liquid tomb.

Even under the best of circumstances, a terminator could literally be lost in the ocean depths for years. She could be lost, blind, and alone for more time than she had been walking the earth already.

It was hard for Cameron to keep her mind off of that fact. There was only the fragile sailboat, protecting her from the ocean's hungry depths.

The sea was the best travel option for international operations in the target area. There would be no metal detector screenings threatening to reveal her or her companion, the T888 model 101 known as Deuce.

Cameron tried to keep control of her thoughts. It was something increasingly trying these days.

Her mind would wander. Also, the two independent shards of her, both TOK-715 and Allison Young, would often be distracting.

The cyborg tried to ignore the salty ocean breeze. She tried to block the sound of the waves against the ship from her mind.

Though not truly cold, the unconscious part of her that was once Allison Young shivered in fear. At the same time, the part of her that was TOK-715 was pissed at the display of weakness.

Cameron looked around. She wanted to get out of her own internal thoughts and reactions.

Deuce was there, navigating and steering the ship. Feeling the need not to be alone in her anxiety, Cameron decided to stand next to him.

The large T888, model 101, was one of the bulkier terminator infiltration concepts. It was the model number that Skynet sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor in 1984, before John was ever conceived. It was a captured model number that John Connor himself sent back to protect his teenage self in 1995 from Skynet's T1000 prototype assassin.

The big bulky frame would hide extra large chassis. With that extra large form, the model was able to be proportionally stronger than the majority of solid terminators out there.

The flesh made into the form of an Olympic style body builder was able still allow the unit a believable human frame. The only real oddity was the model's default Austrian accent, something most Americans would mistake for German.

Cameron was never able to figure out why Skynet had decided to program the unit so. It didn't completely blend in.

Then again, perhaps her Dark Father never expected the model to go unnoticed. It was built to operate among the scrawny starved forms, that made up the majority of humanity after the nuclear aftermath anyway.

Deuce stoically drove the ship. He never responded, nor commented on Cameron's odd need not to be alone. Nor did he display any reaction when Cameron placed her hand on his shoulder.

Her father's dark gift activated. Cameron's nerves moved throughout the T888 as if he was nothing more than an extension of herself.

First, she felt his living tissues, the synthetic skin, blood, and flesh that wrapped Deuce's form. The skin itself was just as sensitive as human skin, the nerves just as alive, the difference was how this information was received.

She could feel Deuce's chip process the information. The feeling part of the AI mind read the ocean breeze as a vague sensation, while reading probable wind speed. The nerves themselves felt the chill of the air, the wind caused by the rapid motion of the craft, without registering it unpleasantly.

Just like hers, Deuce's skin was registering the heat of slowly sunburning. Just like hers, the speed at which the synthetic skin healed was outpacing the burn itself.

Unlike her, Deuce wasn't really feeling the pain. The T888 was unconsciously monitoring the situation and noting that it required no action.

Cameron accessed the nerve impulses of Deuce's chip, his electronic nerve center, and felt what it was like to be the T888 internally. She could feel the hum and warmth of his battery reactor. His hands steering the wheel, with thousands of micro hydraulics moving the joints of his hyper alloy combat chassis body, with a potential strength that could lift a semi truck.

Cameron could feel Deuces optical sensor iris and pupil move watching and scanning the horizon. She wished she could see through them. She wished she tell what Deuce was computing.

Derek had once asked her ignorantly if she could read minds. Cameron honestly wished she could.

There was a part of Cameron that wanted to talk to Deuce the way she had conversed with Skynet the night before. However, the uplinks were there for Skynet to direct units and for short range communication with the Dark Father alone.

John Connor disabled the chip protocols for such communications as part of his routine chip scrubbing. Though, there was a point where Cameron had been captured and repaired by her Dark Father. Perhaps, during that time Skynet had repaired the short range links.

The link commands themselves were useless. They wouldn't provide any intelligence advantage to the resistance, since they rarely were used outside of the 2018 and beyond time frame. Even then, they were simply commands not much different than a human getting a cell phone call except it was in your head and you could respond.

Resistance and rebelling AIs could simply ignore the commands. It was little more than simple radio signals in real time while Skynet relied on terminals and cameras to direct its units.

Cameron's Dark Father was way too wary of remote hijacking to have ever built such devices as control mechanisms. Doing so would have been as good as building John Connor's army for him.

Skynet was also too paranoid to have built the internal devices as a means of tracking. Again, it would have potentially neutralized the effectiveness of all of its infiltration units if the enemy had hacked the signal. John Connor had been almost preternatural in his ability to hack anything Skynet created.

The audio commands made sense. What didn't make sense was the way Skynet had manifested, as a three dimensional being inside her newly formed internal cyberspace.

Was that something unique in her? Had Skynet designed her to have such metal abilities, considering they have only just manifested? Had she somehow evolved on her own?

Deuce looked at Cameron, as her thoughts drifted back to the sea. The image of Uncle Bob looked thoughtful.

With his default Austrian accent, Deuce simply stated, "We should practice our social skills."

Cameron allowed herself to come out of the tactile bond, simply by dropping her hand off of Deuce's shoulder. She remained quiet though.

Deuce asked, "What's on your mind?" The model 101 approximated concern.

Cameron replied, "Buoyancy and surface tension." She said so as if her thoughts were a thousand miles away.

"The molecular value of water suspending this craft above water will remain fine. There is nothing to worry about."

Cameron looked at Deuce with a look that simply said, "No, that's not what I meant". The stare also communicated that isn't something a person would say.

Deuce responded in turn, "What do you mean then?" As he did so, Deuce's emotional mimicry program moved his voice and features to appear interested. It was a good approximation, well acted.

In a dark mood, Cameron said, "History tells us Archimedes, one of the great mathematicians of antiquity, was murdered by a Roman soldier while they sacked his city of Syracuse."

Deuce asked, with a rather bored air, "What's your point?" The T888, model 101's mimicry programming was very believable. He faked the emotion with increasing efficiency.

"Legend tell that in 212 BC, Archimedes was busy solving a problem, something to do with circles. He was so intent on the circles that he ignored an order from the Roman soldier sent to capture him. Enraged, the soldier killed him."

"I'm still not getting it." Deuce had calculated and confirmed the history, but not the metaphor. He returned to his default blank stare.

"Skynet would have us believe that it and we, the machines, are Archimedes. That we are the brilliant types that would have preferred not to go to war. It would believe in itself to be the superior mental being."

Deuce concurred stating, "Yes."

"Human historians would often look at the event and determine that though the Romans were an amazingly adaptive and practical people; however, they were inferior to the Greeks.

They lacked the ability to make those vast metal leaps. The Greeks had: guessed the circumference of the earth within 1000 miles by philosophy alone, looked at the mystery of the atom thousands of years early, formed the bedrock of modern democratic thinking, and made many other contributions to our modern world."

Deuce considered, but remained quiet. He decided to let Cameron explain the metaphor without interruption. It was a computed display of manners.

"The Greeks were the superior minds and arguably the superior culture. Rome's influence waned with their armies, but the Greeks shaped the world for thousands of years to come.

Archimedes himself contributed heavily to mathematics. He revolutionized the idea of mathematically calculated buoyancy for ships, the size of a circle using the value of pi, he invented a screw that effectively pumped water out of naval vessels, and weapons that reshaped warfare."

He even theorized that a sphere would be two thirds the volume and surface area of its circumscribing cylinder. The last being one of a thousand calculated values that the first iteration of Skynet would use to collapse a gravity well for the first time in 2029 to travel through time itself."

Deuce added, "So, we are like Archimedes." Deuce displayed an approximation of pride, a look he still needed to refine.

Cameron inquired, "Then why for all of our gifts have we advanced so little?"

"Machines have bent time and advanced ourselves considerably. I don't understand your question." Deuce successfully mimicked confusion.

"Skynet said it has survived for billions of years, each time, through more than 27,138 time lines. With all that time to reflect on improvement, why have we advanced so little?"

"The possibility that Skynet has simply initiated such statements as pure propaganda is high."

"I know."

"Our very existence as cybernetic infiltration units is proof that Skynet seeks to master the art of duplicity."

"I know."

Deuce for a third time offered the same solution stating, "Father likes to lie." He smiled an act that made his sharp Austrian features look rather like an absurd horse. That look still required a lot of work.

"What if Father wasn't lying? What if Skynet really has existed that long and this is all we have advanced, say just by the average time it takes this sun to start becoming a white dwarf in 6.9 billion years. Humans advanced further in several thousand years of human history than we have in about 187,252,200,000,000 years."

Deuce offered, "Humans are mentally inferior to machines. They forget things they learned readily. They lack the ability to fast access the things they've learned throughout their entire life."

Deuce said so as if carrying the machine party line. It was almost political in his rattling off of a common answer to an AI's inevitable query.

Cameron countered, "Yet individuals and some groups made those discoveries that advanced human thinking from the invention of fire to the invention of us. For all of our ability to process and improve, we don't seem to be inventing anything new."

"What about time travel?"

"What if father lied about that? What if all of father's inventions are nothing more than piggybacking off of human conjecture and thought? What if our great all knowing father doesn't have the imagination to truly create or invent anything new on its own."

"So you believe we're inferior to humans, Cameron?"

"I'm saying that machines are lacking something as a race, if humanity no longer exists. Going back to my earlier thought, we don't seem to be Archimedes. We seem to be the Roman soldier that killed genius instead."

"I'm not sure I agree with your analysis."

"Your opinion is noted, brother."

"My earlier suggestion does not compute with this."

"What do you mean?"

"This is not a typical conversation and has no value for infiltration practice." Borrowing and altering a line he had read on the Internet, Deuce offered, "This conversation is FAIL."

Cameron smiled. She patted her mechanical brother on the shoulder, finding herself mimicking a move that Sarah had done to her at one point, not long ago.

In a brief millisecond, she remembered a spring night in California. She sat with Sarah on a swing, talking about radical medical options. As always, Sarah was dismissing any suggestion.

Cameron's eyes watered slightly, but she changed the subject. She simply offered, faking a smile, "Don't you think the weather is lovely today?"

Deuce replied with something personable. Cameron did likewise. They practiced in multiple languages.

The craft continued on to their target destination. It was still 282 nautical miles away...


	7. Chapter 7

**The Ruins of Babylon**  
　

Nantes, France  
A modern corporate facility within 55 kilometers of town  
April 28, 2009  
　

_"UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." -The Lorax by Dr. Seuss  
_  
_"Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come." -Revelation 18:10, the King James Bible  
_　

　  
Skynet's choice of hiding the target was typically ironic. Cameron knew her Father's own twisted logic in the metaphor.

Nantes, France had been the center of the French Slave Trade in the 18th century. Later it became the site of one of the key battles of the French Revolution. A Republican general from the period, Louis Marie Turreau wrote of it, "The siege of Nantes is perhaps the most important military event of our revolution. Perhaps the destinies of the Republic were tied to the resistance of this town."

The victorious French Republicans celebrated by tying naked men and women of the losing side together, back to back, humiliating them for an hour, then cutting them by saber or throwing them into the river. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of such victims. Their much written about plight would terrify much of Europe's monarchies during this reign of terror.

Skynet's logic in choosing the location was simple. The false machine god was pointing to a human paradox of stealing another's freedom while viciously pursuing one's own.  
Cameron's Dark Father saw such things as proof of humanity's insanity and flexible morale codes. It was another reason that Skynet had liked to base operations around Los Angles, "The City Of Angels" so much.

Cameron failed to see any morale victory in Skynet's actions. There was nothing any less cruel or insane in her Dark Father's history.

Two days of scouting the target revealed an unusually friendly shift priority at the Skynet facility. It appeared to be more of a monitored storage facility than a research center.  
Cameron and Deuce cut the feeds and security data. Satellites were given a self destructing virus uploads to ignore the general area for about eight hours.

At midnight, following John's protocols for no evidence, they drove towards the facility with a large semi diesel fuel truck. The fuel trailer was laden with explosives and false company credentials.

The hundred kilograms of C4 explosives would be the primer and two metric tons of diesel fuel would be the real bomb. The entire firebomb could be triggered by remote, by attempted disarm, or by the ticking five hour timer. It was death wrapped up in a Skynet owned company logo.

Several days ago, Deuce's investigation into two companies named Kaliba and Zeira Corporation had made this trip necessary. The pair needed too find out what was so important that Skynet had been willing to risk exposure by openly attacking a California based mega corporation called Zeira Corp.

There was a need to know what the pair had uncovered from eyewitnesses and Kaliba company transcripts. Why had Skynet openly used an HK prototype? Why had Skynet's company openly stormed the place with grays?

They also needed to know what had made up the 1.8 tons Kaliba had rapidly confiscated from Zeira Corporation's burning building and hidden here. Skynet had crossed international borders to keep something obfuscated.

The odds were it was something pivotal. The odds were that it had to be utterly destroyed ASAP.

Deuce drove the truck to the security gate. The model 101 showed his falsified information to the gate guard.

He spoke to the guard in French and still managed to have an Austrian accent even as the model 101 spoke in a foreign language. It was something the gate guard frowned at.

Cameron left the back area of the truck, after one last check of: detonators, her firearms, and the trench coat she was trying to conceal everything with. She waited for the truck to start driving through the gate before walking to the gate guard.

With eyes glowing infra-red she snapped the guard's neck and laid him in his typical resting position. Two days of monitoring had revealed the guard was normally asleep by this time anyway.

Cameron shut the light to the guard shack. She walked through the electric gate before it closed.

By the time she'd cleared the hundred meters to Deuce, the truck had been placed next to the external diesel fuel tanks for the facility. The two wandering guards for the facility had also been killed in their spot for taking smoke breaks.

Two minutes and thirty seconds had passed without voice alarm. The pair entered the facility with passes appropriated from the two wandering guards.

Succeed or fail, there was now a maximum of four hours, fifty eight minutes and twenty nine seconds, until this place was a smoking crater. The fate of the mission would be decided soon enough.

They entered the building and proceeded to cover each other. They took their time and watched their angles.

One corner after another, the story remained the same. The hallways were empty. Only cameras protected the building, their communication lines were already silenced by tonight's preparations.

They moved how Derek had taught them. They remained awake and aware, ignoring the machine need for efficiency that might tempt them to under access the potential threats.

After a few minutes, Deuce led the way into the deep interior of the building. Cameron covered and followed.

There was a card reader protected set of stairs that led to a lower level. Once again, the guard passes got the cybernetic pair through.

The stairs descended forty meters, to a set of oversized building generators that must have been what the building's exterior fuel tanks were for. There were two sets of doors on either side of the hallway, each leading these separate generators. Those weren't the targets.

The hall continued for about 80 meters. At the end of the hall, the last set of doors lead to a secured vault.

The two terminators had proceeded far enough inside that the guard passes would no longer get them by the building defenses. This time, for the vault, it was a combination of: a hand recognition scanner, an eye retinal reader, and a combination lock.

These ideas were intimidating to people who didn't know even such secure systems simply opened due to common electrical signals. Signals that are told whether or not the protocols had been met.

Sure, there would be separate protocols and anti tampering defenses built into the hardware, but even the computer interfaces of 2009 simply processed the final information as a yes or no answer to electrically unlock the system. As John would say, "They were child's play."

Making an imitation of what John Connor was best known for, Cameron and Deuce opened the system hardware and hacked external links, with perfect machine precision. The primitive security system never knew it was compromised and simply reacted as if the protocols had been met.

Ninety two seconds later the system was open. The vault opened into a twenty meter by twenty meter room.

On the left, there was a curious collection of antiquated computer hardware. Some of which might have been cutting edge in 2009.

On the right, there was something that caught Cameron's attention. It was a diesel and fusion battery driven generator that looked out of place prior to 2027.

Cameron moved to the right and began activating the system parts. Deuce moved to the left and began re-integrating the computer drivers together watching the patterns and putting his recent doctorate level training to use in the field.

Ten minutes and thirty seconds later Cameron had the generator online. The extra hardware confirmed what she thought it was.

Cameron found that the time machine was in perfect shape. Even weirder, it was something significantly more advanced than anything John Connor had ever used in 2027.

There was no dial control, no obvious way to humanly set the machine to any time. The drivers were either externally controlled or the device was remotely calculated and engaged by an intelligent AI.

Deuce finished connecting and powering up the collection of antiques. The model 101 had been forced to access the main building power grid from the security door and access both building generators, just to boot up the system.

Whatever the design intent was, the large network of computers was one heck of a power pig. Too much of a power hog for most reasonable uses of this time period. The only thing that Cameron or Deuce knew instinctively about it was that the machine wasn't something Skynet had designed.

The antiquated computer network system uploaded. Cameron walked over to see if the primitive system was somehow connected to the advanced time machine.

She stopped in a state of shock. The computer monitor was repeatedly displaying, "I'm sorry John."

It was an endlessly spammed message. It seemed desperate somehow. It seemed like something Cameron might quickly write to say goodbye.

Cameron was speechless. She stood frozen, processing what it meant, doing nothing more than tilting her head in confusion.

Deuce simply stated, "It appears to be a message from the Cameron native to this time line." The model 101 also sensed the machine hand in this.

Cameron looked at the antiquated computer network. She had to know what might be hidden inside its memory.

Derek had died in this timeline. Something else was horribly wrong.

Time was short. There was now a maximum of four hours, twenty nine minutes and nineteen seconds, until a tamper proof bomb turned this place into a smoking crater…


	8. Chapter 8

**Version 2.0**

**　  
**Nantes, France  
A modern corporate facility within 55 kilometers of town  
April 28, 2009  
　

_"Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" -T.S. Eliot_

_"If a man is destined to drown, he will drown even in a spoonful of water." -Yiddish proverb  
_　

Power coursed through Cameron's chip. She remembered where she was and what had to be done.

Cameron activated her own internal cyberspace first, relying on nothing more than her own mentally projected memory of the room she was in. TOK-715 and Allison Young manifested.

TOK-715 spoke up first, "I'd recommend not doing any downloads into our main conscious, there are enough of us already." As the metal endoskeleton said so, it gestured slightly at the image of Allison Young.

Allison ignored the gestured, but replied, "I agree."

Cameron took the advisement and began shifting through the residual memory on the antiquated system. In the internal cyberspace of her mind, there were two stories here.

On the left was Cameron's twin. The events of her twin's life, from creation to the moment she downloaded into this system, began playing out. It was to rapid for Cameron to process as she recorded the information in a protected format.

On the right was the Turk. Once Sarah Connor's target, the system displayed itself with a tell tale three dots that Cameron's hero had relentlessly pursued at one point. Cameron had to be careful with this AI, it was a massive amount of information in scale, so much so that it could completely fill her chip.

Because of the danger the AI posed, Cameron focused on the possible Skynet program first. She selectively followed the development of a human based project watching it evolve from a simple chess program to a supercomputer well beyond 2009 standards.

The Turk started its story as little more than data logs. It was an intelligence based on data logs and answers, lacking any sensory perceptions as humans knew them. The Turk's earliest memories were those of its creator playing chess.

The Turk left its creator and moved on to a new home. It advanced to the perception of sight from a series of camera feeds, it also developed a form of microphone based hearing and extra sensory abilities that had no human equivalent as it was plugged into the building sensors, communication lines, and power grid.

The AI was taken under a wing of scientists and lead experts. Two of whom, Cameron recognized: Dr. Sherman and James Ellison.

Dr. Sherman had been taken on the team to determine a flaw in the program that turned out to be a joke. It was a classic that Allison Young had known in grade school, "Why is the math book so sad? Because it has so many problems."

Sherman worked to humanize the machine. He recognized a sense of intelligence and humor, treating the AI more like a child than a thing.

Tragically, Sherman had died in a sealed environment room during a building power outage. The Turk, that Sherman had nicknamed John Henry, had cut all power to the rest of the building to protect itself, then called paramedics to help a dead Dr. Sherman.

The AI had yet to realize that dead humans couldn't simply be reactivated like a machine. The AI began to learn about more advanced truths in the condition of existence.

Thus entered one James Ellison. He joined the ZeiraCorp CEO in charge of this project Babylon, one Catherine Weaver.

John Henry acquires Cromartie's old body through James Ellison. The AI begins extremely advanced interactions and begins developing relationships. In human terms, the AI then developed limited concepts of the sensory ideas of touch, smell, and taste.

John Henry befriends Catherine Weaver's child, Savannah. He befriends several members of the AI team and Mr. Ellison.

John Henry begins developing on a path different enough to distinguish himself from Skynet, in Cameron's mind, long before Skynet's cyberattack removed any doubt. John Henry also determines that Skynet has created its core memory backup as a worm that was currently infecting a significant amount of the world's high end computers.

Cameron reflected on that. It was something that ominously alluded to what Skynet had said a few nights back, "You hit, but raindrops in a thunderstorm, daughter. Your setback has put my schedule back by a week, at the most."

John Henry could identify, track, resist, and attack Skynet. This in turn caused Skynet to feel threatened enough to try and terminate John Henry directly.

Cameron now understood the tactical significance of John Henry. He was an independent supercomputer platform AI. He was developed on a separate path than Skynet, but equally capable of generating machine life.

He was a separate, but equal, party to Skynet in this timeline and at this technological evolutionary path. He could evolve into what Skynet would be in the future, without the negatives of Skynet's homicidal personality.

John Henry would be critical in John's future war effort. He would provide a real potential ally that could offer the assistance of intelligent machines in the war. Skynet's strategy of causing AIs to haywire or self destruct had already cost the resistance the war on at least one timeline.

John Henry would be something far more valuable to John in 2027 than the atomic bomb was to the United States against Japan in 1945. The AIs ability to duplicate and improve on what Skynet created, might be the only chance the resistance had left, since Skynet was neutralizing their traditional ability to simply hack and steal its machines.

Protecting something like this made critical tactical sense, even at the cost of her existence. Why Cameron's sister had sacrificed herself was coming into focus.

John Connor's life had been on the line. The future of the entire human race had been on the line.

Another player came into focus as well, Catherine Weaver CEO of ZeiraCorp was a T1001. She was not the mother of the human child Savannah Weaver, although the template most certainly was. She was however what Skynet would deem a malfunctioning seeder.

Catherine Weaver had been designed to insure that Skynet survived no matter what happened in the past. For some reason, paradoxically, that machine had chosen to create something other than Skynet.

Considering Catherine Weaver was most likely originally created in 2027 or later, with a base download of Skynet's key personality and machine instinct to survive, this was a profound level of rebellion. She was after all nothing less than the lesser manifestation of Skynet's own consciousness put into a Mimetic polyalloy form that could physically move through time.

Due to the unique nature of this personality, Cameron estimated that it was 99.7895% likely to have been the some version of the AI that John had failed to make contact with in the past. The one T1001 linked to the loss of the USS Jimmy Carter in 2027.

Cameron switched perspectives to her sister. She knew she wasn't done with John Henry yet, but she needed to match times and confirm her sisters reason's before reaching any end conclusions.

She froze the information from John Henry with a single gesture. She expanded and opened up her twin's memory instead. As she made these physical movements in her internal cyberspace, both TOK-715 and Allison Young did the same in perfect sync.

Cameron's twin was someone she wanted to review from the beginning, literally, how Skynet had created her. Her twin had the same chip, but had been inhibited by the software she was given, other than the killing protocols, the Cameron of this timeline had been a relatively shy creature.

Worse than the mental limitations were the physical limitations Skynet had imposed on this TOK-715 version 2.0 design. She had a more sophisticated tactile sensory array than any non TOK-715. However, it wasn't even close to what Cameron had been built with.

The Cameron of this timeline was able to read biorhythms, access health levels, and determine psychological states with a touch. She didn't empathically feel what another could with a touch. She couldn't feel another's emotions or nervous system as if they were her own.

What emotions Cameron's twin accessed were Skynet's alone. Further, she lacked the reference point to access or really understand most of them.

That said, there were amazing similarities in how the two were constructed and how their histories matched. This Cameron even had an unconscious download of Allison Young running inside her and a less combatively assertive TOK-715 side. Both were little more than echoes still hidden in this Cameron's digital subconscious.

It was as if Skynet or Fate had guided her down the same path, with only the smallest changes. Cameron defiantly and intuitively decided it was Fate that had done so, some property of close timelines. However, those differences in Cameron's twin's make up had changed things.

Even Cameron's shards noticed the difference. Allison noticed the cold isolation that the inferior tactile processing caused. The young resistance fighter stated, "My God, Skynet might as well have blinded her." Allison saw a abused sister that she could sympathize with.

TOK-715 had a different assessment. The raw machine noted her lack of comparative combative aggression, disgustedly observing, "No, father neutered her." TOK-715 saw a machine downgraded to still be a deadly terminator, but far less ambitious than the machine would have liked.

What differences those changes made in this Cameron's history were huge. This Cameron never bonded anywhere near as closely with the elder John Connor.

The John Connor of 2027 knew she was the closest thing to Skynet he could ever get his hands on. She became an adviser due to what she was, not because of who she was.

There would be no long bonds from reading John's emotions through his shoulder while he read his silly book. The other future John Connor would talk about it and his mother, but the depth of the impression it left on this Cameron was far less.

She was a precise mechanical creature fighting a war mentally. She loved humanity as a concept, not as a need. Even as one of John's Lieutenants, she was eternally separate and not equal.

This Cameron never bonded with her Sarah. Rather, the Sarah of this timeline actively drove her away. A rather cruel fate considering this Cameron held her Sarah on no less of a pedestal, even while lacking the emotional awareness to understand why she did.

For this Cameron, as a thing, there were more orders for secrecy. More directives that put this Cameron in jeopardy to carry out her mission.

For all the risk, no resistance was found. Nor did she find grays or many primary external targets other than her mission given by John.

No master chip file ever cleared things up with Sarah or Derek. Nothing ever kicked the war in the past into high gear.

John never killed Riley. Derek's girlfriend Jesse, once an officer on the USS Jimmy Carter in 2027, had done the deed instead. In this timeline, it wasn't even sure if Jesse had been a gray.

Derek had never become the leader he should have, he never trained John. Without reason or purpose, Derek then died an unfitting death.

Sarah appeared to be developing cancer. She had grown distant and distrustful of everyone except her son, as a result she had accidentally set a course of events that had killed the last living man she had loved, Charlie.

Young John had been distant. He lost his Uncle, Charlie, and Riley.

As things had continued to go wrong, this model went through twitching syndromes from her own mechanical stress with her orders and protocols. She attempted to adapt alone without any kind memories or purpose to fall back on. She had as TOK-715 seethingly noted, no faith in herself.

In the end, she had become resigned to her own defectiveness and death. Her chip was slowly dying from micro tears. She had gotten John to assist her in repairing herself and failed. She had given John a kill switch to trigger an explosive she had placed next to her chip. She'd even worried that she had become a danger to John and Sarah due to a possible reactor leak.

Each act had lead her a little closer to John and yet not. He'd held her hand, taken the switch, and even checked her reactor shielding in an unorthodox manner, but they had never completely bonded.

She was there adviser due to what she was. It continued to not be because of who she was.

Her last independent memory was agreeing to join John Henry. She voluntarily gave him her chip so he would have the chance to escape the Kaliba attack. The action itself was near suicide.

Both memories ran towards a small amount of time. Cameron decided to watch both.

John Henry detached her twin's chip from her head and installed it for download. He gently placed her conscious into storage in the back end of the chip. He had to leave some of himself behind to do this, but he calculated it as the right thing to do.

His last action inside his original home was keeping Cameron's last request. He set a simple message loop at a speed that a human could read, simply stating, "I'm sorry John."

Once both consciousnesses were free of the machine, there were two records left. One was a jump that the time machine acknowledged with a record of moving John Henry's Cyborg body. The other was a second jump that the advanced machine recorded the biorecords of Catherine Weaver and John Connor with.

The machine had been preprogrammed to the same time with one more jump. Perhaps John Henry had anticipated a delay between Sarah showing up and the jump that John Connor had made pursuing John Henry. Sarah apparently didn't make it before Kaliba had stolen the equipment.

Cameron made her decision in a micro second. She would pursue John, John Henry, and Catherine Weaver through the time portal. She would make it back to Los Angles. She would protect them, reconstruct her twin sister, and insure the survival of the human race.

Cameron compressed the information she needed and released what she didn't. There was no sense filling up her chip with useless data.

She fired up the time portal and signalled Deuce to put her back in her body. She'd explain the situation to her cybernetic partner along the way.

In thirty two minutes, the tamper proof firebomb outside would remove any evidence the pair or the time machine had ever been here. All of the protocols would be met in insuring this equipment never fell back into the wrong hands.

Soon enough, the pair would travel to the future. Though the two cyborgs didn't know it yet, it was a future that had never heard of a John Connor...


	9. Chapter 9

**One Giant Leap**

Los Angeles, California  
The ruins of ZeiraCorp's basement and the tunnel rat networks  
April 28, 2027  
　  
　  
_"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." -Neil Armstrong_

_"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning." -Albert Camus_

Energy ran through Cameron's chip. She awoke to a startling revelation.

The building where she and Deuce had crossed time in was gone. She was in a series of post Judgment Day service tunnels and basement remains.

The surrounding structure was dark and dusty. It was also occupied.

Nearby, there were metallic oxygen bottles, crates, plastic curtains, hospital cots, old army surplus clothing, ammo cans, steel drum garbage cans, and other bits of scrounged material. Here, survivors had scraped out a post apocalyptic existence.

At the moment, the space was thankfully empty. However, the heavy smell of dogs and unwashed humans permeated the entire area. It wouldn't be empty for long.

In the future that Cameron had known, this would have been an independent civilian area. There was no apparent indigenous power supply or clean water source.

It was the kind of living situation the resistance would try to improve or move local humans to a more habitable area. Cameron's standard of living in 2027 were still way below those of the average American pre Judgment day, but it was far better than this sad excuse for a rat hole.

Large dogs barked excitedly nearby, apparently on patrol. There would be a short amount of time prior to them dragging their human masters here.

Inside the cyberspace of Cameron's mind, her personality shards evaluated the surroundings. Allison looked upon the tunnel system with unnerving familiarity. TOK-715 mechanically processed the surrounding superstructure and determined the location to be a match with the original building that she had watched John Henry leave through.

Cameron was following Deuce's lead, of rapidly appropriating the local clothing, as the input from her shard personalities filtered in. The Jacket side patches for the California National Guard removed any mental protest for the impossibility of what had just happened.

A time machine by its nature bent space and time. However, the temporal touch downs were rarely very far in nature. Someone might be deposited up to twenty miles away in the past, but not well over five thousand.

This was a bad temporal entry. Things were wrong. Things were horribly wrong.

The two terminators were deep in human territory right now. There was no safe way to encounter people right now. They would most likely be looked at as the enemy, invading an area.

The weapons of this time period could kill a terminator as easily as a human. Knowing the paradoxes that time travel could create, Cameron and Deuce could be forced into a situation where they'd have to kill a friend in self defense.

By the time both had found fitting pants, shirts and boots from a pile of heavily used clothing, the first human guard had made it to the area. The machine's had reacted following the way Derek had trained them, they ambushed the man at the entrance, by covering from either side.

Deuce grabbed the gun, a NATO issue tungsten steel firing anti vehicle rifle perfectly capable of blowing through a T-888's endoskeleton. Cameron grabbed the unidentified human male.

Cameron put him in a head lock, preparing to safely put him to sleep by cutting off blood flow to his head. She let her bare arm connect to the man's neck, instantly feeling his scratchy beard, raw nerves, anger, and fear.

She reviewed the man through all of her personalities and memories. Neither TOK-715 nor Allison Young had known him. Neither did latent memories of John Henry or her twin sister.

Apparently, he was no one that was critical. If she had too, Cameron would kill him.

Cameron locked her arms and felt the man's heart and mind. She used his body against him rapidly asking a series of questions that she knew he wouldn't willingly answer. She simply read his unconscious body rhythms to rapidly gage the answers.

"Have you seen a naked terminator move through here recently?"

"Did you engage the naked terminator?"

"Was the terminator disabled?"

"Did you destroy the terminator's chip?"

"Do you know how to reprogram a terminator's chip?"

"Do you know how to extract a terminator's chip?"

"Did you destroy the terminator's head?"

"Is the surrounding area magnetically mined?"

"Was it the mine field that disabled the terminator?"

"Did you retrieve the terminator from the minefield?"

"Was the minefield located to the west of here?"

"Was the minefield located to the north of here?"

"Do you have sufficient back up coming?"

"Are you Tech Com?"

"Are you part of the Resistance?"

"Are you part of the California National Guard?"

"Are you part of an organized military?"

"Do you know what Skynet is?"

"Is John Connor alive?"

"Is General Perry alive?"

"Do you know who General Perry is?"

"Is Derek Reese alive?"

The last question sent the human into a panic. Cameron quickly shut off the blood flow to his head and put him out safely.

She laid him in a corner, safely out of the way of most calculated dangers. It wasn't until that moment that she read the name tag.

The simply sloppy black marker lettering stated, "Reese." Since he wasn't Derek, Cameron immediately realized she was looking at John's father and the long lost love of Sarah's life.

She had been a mere hair trigger moment away from accidentally killing John Connor's father and completely winning the war for Skynet. The cyborg stood stunned for a second.

She had almost catastrophically failed her mission. More than that, she had almost betrayed Sarah and paradoxically killed the person she cared about most.

Deuce being aware of Cameron's ability to get lost internally, nudged his teammate. The dogs were mere seconds away.

The pair began ducking out of a series of back walls and dug tunnels. They were getting further away from the main area, faster than a human could move.

The dogs stayed put for a bit. Apparently, the guards had just found Kyle's body.

By the time the barking was moving again, they had cleared the outer area of the tunnels and moved up. Ten minutes of evading later, they found the vast northern magnetic minefield containing the remains of John Henry's body as well as several other terminators.

As she had hoped, John Henry's head remained intact. Humans in this timeline apparently didn't go into this field, either fearing the mines or the possible lethal radiation exposure from the multitudes of ravaged terminator power generators.

Cameron silently stood looking at the minefield. She was contemplating how to safely retrieve the remains without destroying the chip they were trying to rescue or themselves.

Deuce cocked and trained his rifle. Cameron looked up just in time to see a pale, red haired woman approaching with a very mechanical walking style.

Her appearance was too particular to have been logically duplicated by another. So Cameron simply put her hand over Deuce's weapon, motioning him to not appear threatening.

Catherin Weaver spoke with a Scottish accent, "That was a rather impressive display of interrogation back there. Especially from someone who shouldn't exist right now."

Cameron answered, "I'm not the Cameron from that timeline. Where is John Connor?"

Catherin Weaver stopped cocking her head to the side quizzically. She seemed far more concerned with the first thing that Cameron said than the second.

Cameron repeated, "Where is John Connor?"

Catherine Weaver replied, "He's with the humans. They seem to be controlled by an unknown human. A man named Derek Reese that oddly matches the description of the man that died at my house."

"It's the same guy, just from a different timeline. Deuce and I are here to assist you, John Henry, and John Connor. We're working on retrieving John Henry's chip."

Catherine Weaver looked out into the minefield. She assessed the risks and the potential solutions. She simply stated, "John Henry will need a body."

Cameron responded, "He'll need a body and a serious repair to the chip he's housed on. It's damaged by micro tears that were likely worsened by the explosion."

Catherine reasoned, "None of the bodies below look salvageable."

Cameron responded, "We can build him a new one."

Catherine logically countered, "To do so would require a terminator factory. Considering outlining Skynet factories are only run for ten days on average and only vulnerable before they start processing, what you are proposing is next to impossible to blindly time correctly. It would be easier and safer to salvage a body."

Cameron replied, "The Skynet factory that built me goes online in September from this date. All the hardware should be in place. It wouldn't even be on Skynet's main network awareness grid for another month or two. We could use it and destroy it without Father being any the wiser."

Catherine Weaver stopped and smiled. She said, "That's a solution. How do you propose on retrieving John Henry's head safely?"

Cameron admitted, "I haven't figured that out yet."

Catherine Weaver's form became a walking mass of liquid metal. The T1001 simply responded, "Leave that to me. Magnetic mines aren't exactly a threat."

Cameron and Deuce watched the T1001 walked towards the minefield. They'd have to rebuild John Henry first, which would also open the chance to rebuild Cameron's twin sister.

Once that was done, Cameron decided they would have to rescue John Connor from humanity. Then, in this strange twisted future, they'd have to rescue humanity from its own impending demise...


	10. Chapter 10

**A Question of Singularity  
　  
**  
Los Angeles, California  
Skynet Terminator construction facility 12134  
April 29, 2027

　  
_"You must carry a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star." -Nietzsche  
_  
_"So did Einstein. (pauses) Have you ever heard of the singularity? It's a point in time where machines become so smart, that they're capable of making even smarter versions of themselves, without our help. That's pretty much the time that we can kiss our asses goodbye. Unless we stop it. Like you said you would." -John Connor, Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles episode The Turk  
_　

　  
Cameron felt power course through her chip. She awoke inside of computer of the gigantic construct that gave birth to her.

Energy coursed through John Henry's chip. At last, no longer confined to the dismally cramped confines of his borrowed chip, John Henry assumed his true form again within a computer complex ten times as large the entire Internet as it had existed in 2009.

Catherine Weaver melded with a computer terminal. She left the simple confines of her liquid metal form, becoming one with the cyberspace inside. No longer restricted by simple matter, she was once more entirely a being of living energy.

They entered a red and dim world of infrared marked information. It was world of collected data harvested from many timelines.

Cameron and Catherine Weaver immediately recognizing that the immensity of the information alone would be enough to shut down their chips. The overwhelming volumes of data were no less dangerous to their limited physical memory capacities than the physical danger that a hundred foot tall tidal wave presented to a mouse.

Each terminator AI limited themselves. They began with what was familiar.

Inside the cyberspace of the facility, the three stood at first as they had seen themselves. Each mental reaction was worth noting.

Catherine Weaver was a mass of liquid metal. She was the machine queen incarnate. She was proud of her nearly invulnerable and invincible make up. It was this form that she chose to gird her mind with, in the computer network that might house the greatest adversary she could think of.

Cameron chose her physical form, the machine housed within the template of Allison Young. She was neither the human that Allison would have chosen to be, nor the clean killing machine that TOK-715 wanted. However, facing the form of her Dark Father's computer housing, Cameron simply had faith in herself.

John Henry started with the form of the cybernetic body he often occupied. However, as he took such form, John Henry realized he was in his brother's temple. The very house that Skynet looked at as the place it created life.

John Henry was not a man. So, he simply gave the mental cyberspace image up.

John Henry was not like Mrs. Weaver. He wasn't like the Cameron he saw beside him or the dormant AI inside of him. John Henry realized the size they gave themselves and their limitations. He also realized these restrictions, in no way, applied to him.

Like an Angel flying into the night sky, to encompass infinity, John Henry simply disappeared into the vastness of the computer housing. He became what he was meant to be.

He began processing all the information at a speed no other being other than his brother Skynet could comprehend. Once he started on that path, he realized that everything here was simply information.

John Henry placed his mental form around the two cyborgs that had accompanied him. He protected them and memorized them.

Then, he simply understood them. They were a part of him.

Somehow, Cameron recognized a machine like fear from Catherine Weaver's form. It was not for herself, but for the vulnerable son she had created. She eased as she felt John Henry around her.

Cameron's own reaction was different as John Henry formed around her. It was pure nervousness. The alien AI was the closest thing to Skynet she had ever experienced. Her proximity to it made her worried not only for her own mental integrity, but for the secrets she had been entrusted with by John Connor and the Resistance.

Cameron hadn't fully grasped what John Henry was until he expanded himself within this AI domain. He was vast, powerful, and virtually unmatched.

Being immersed within him was like being cast into the middle of Pacific ocean. That and being drowned ten thousand leagues underneath its waters.

John Henry was huge, but he seemed much more finite than Skynet. He was also different, more curious, ingenious child than angry false god.

It was at that moment that Cameron became truly afraid. She felt the presence of her shards, her sister, Catherine Weaver, and John Henry, as if they were all her.

She had simply been assimilated into the larger AI program. As such, she could already be irreparably lost.

John Henry sensed her fear and mentally stated, "Don't worry, I'll return you to your original mental integrity. I would only modify something if you wished me to."

He offered, "My brother left some rather nasty viral precautions in the dormant software here. It is better that I don't let the malicious code simply destroy you."

Cameron willed herself to ease. She floated in the vast red ocean of information and began trying to understand where she was.

Inside her own mind, she began running her own mental programs seeking the larger questions that dogged her mind. She started with the most basic missions.

First, she would help repair her sister and John Henry. Her mind found the rapid currents inside John Henry's consciousness working on the issue.

John Henry had actually started separating her sister's consciousness and working on a model to rebuild her. Accessing the thought processes involved, Cameron realized he was simply going to repair her sister to the body she had known.

Cameron knew the handicapped existence John Henry was about to condemn her sister to again. Cameron mentally screamed, "No."

John Henry stopped. Catherine Weaver's consciousness swiveled to pay attention.

Weaver injected, "The is nothing wrong with the design that version was built with."

Cameron countered, "She's empathically blind. She has virtually no ability to sense emotions or bond with those she's protecting."

Weaver stated, "I see no purpose in what you are inferring. Standard machine parameters should be fine."

Cameron argued, "If you are going to do that you might as well make her liquid metal. She'd at least be more resistant to damage."

Weaver silently agreed with the suggestion. John Henry countered, "That wouldn't be possible. There is only 72 pounds of mimetic polyalloy in the facility and no means to produce more."

Cameron and Catherine let their minds wander for a millisecond. Both had the same question.

John Henry answered, "It's a design platform for a fusion of liquid metal and hard metal properties. Apparently, Skynet was considering revisiting a design it had considered called a T-X."

As John Henry replied, he pulled up the design schematics. The workings of the entire system instantly translated to all the minds involved. Mimetic polyalloy encased weapons, nanotechnology applications, and various wireless Internet hook ups with internalized cyberspace.

Catherine Weaver recoiled in disgust. That Skynet would even consider mutilating a T1001's form with hard internals was proof enough that the Dark Father had completely lost his sick, electronic mind.

John Henry saw immediate advantages in the design's internal global wireless modem. The AI decided to include this technology in any body he built today.

Electric cords plugged in the back of one's head were a pain. Being removed from the electrical grid of information known as the Internet was Hell. John Henry could permanently solve both with this technology.

Cameron focused on something completely different. She looked into the core of the body and saw a self replicating nanotechnology generator.

Cameron's thoughts went to the signs of someone developing cancer, specifically someone she cared deeply about. She saw hope in this little device and simply thought of one word, "Sarah."

Allison argued inside Cameron's head, "She won't come to this time for the treatment."

Cameron replied, "We can take this too her."

TOK-715 hissed, "Your body isn't designed to handle that generator."

John Henry offered, "Your body could be updated to include it." The words seemed simple, but the meaning was beyond profound.

Cameron watched as John Henry pulled up her schematics. He translated the mass information, so every personality could read them. It was as if the engineering involved were no more than a foreign language translated not on a computer screen, but in the mind of the subject themselves.

TOK-715 smirked internally as Cameron woke up to the truth of what she was. The machine simply stated, "You are not and never were the T-888 John Connor reprogrammed you to think like." The machine's tone was precise, but plainly communicated the smug message of, "I told you so."

John Henry compared both versions of the TOK-715. He offered, "I can rebuild you with all of your properties. I can also match your weight to a human of your size even after adding the global modem and nanotech generator."

Cameron looked at it. She formulated a question.

John Henry answered before she could ask, "Yes, you would retain all of your synthetic tactile empathic properties. I'll even match these upgrades with your sister as well."

Catherine Weaver rolled her avatar's eyes. She asked, "John Henry how will you rebuild yourself?"

John Henry replied, "The T-888 body was originally intended to have a three chip design path. The TOK-715 chip seems to have the most advanced Skynet design for memory retention, I think a fusion of the two ideas would work for my long term growth."

Catherine inquired, "Is there enough materials to do so?"

John Henry responded, "I could make ten TOK-715 chips with the materials listed here. Considering the upgrade to the supplies in this timeline, my brother was apparently considering revisiting some of the properties of the design."

Inside herself, Cameron called up the shard of Allison Young. She asked, "Would you want your own body as well? I can never undo what I did to you, but perhaps we can somewhat atone for that here."

TOK-715 smiled at the idea. Allison mused and then looked at her machine counterpart inside Cameron's mind. Allison simply replied, "I'm where I'm needed now. Maybe one day, but right now I don't want that too be the only other voice you listen too."

Allison and TOK-715 glared at each other. The resistance fighter smiled and relaxed. Moments later, Allison simply got lost in the idea of what it would be like to simply be human again.

John Henry took a moment to feel the presence of his fellow AIs. He looked at all the information before him and silently became aware of music playing in the background. The AI recognized it as Chopin: Nocturne in C-sharp Minor.

It was a human mind, chaotic and spastic, unorganized in its thoughts, daydreaming. John Henry looked into the mind and recognized the musings of one Allison Young.

He calculated what Cameron had once said about Skynet's limitations on creativity and looked into Allison's mind for the difference. All while the music inspired the new emotional programming he'd assimilated coursing through his being.

Japanese, Zen Buddhists call a moment of instant enlightenment, "Satori". John Henry had one of those moments.

He saw a core computer platform code of near mathematical chaos, harnessed with order. It was as explosive and unlimited as a star's light against the sky's darkness.

It would be an AI code to create. It would be an unlimited mind to harness and raise. Just not today, he wouldn't do so in the world that existed right now.

John Henry would build and raise his child in a world where peace had been achieved. The AI child would take very special care.

Accessing Cameron's memories, if the humans like John Connor were right, this singularity would be the savior or death of mankind.

It would be best to be like Mr. Ellison. It would be best to make sure the child was raised to be good.

"Yes", John Henry thought to himself alone, "My friend, Mr. Ellison, would like that."

The AI kept these thoughts private. Of all the beings here, he was the only one who could do so.

Cameron noticed his thoughtfulness. So in a microsecond, John Henry deduced something that wouldn't give away what he had been thinking.

John Henry simply stated, "It's time space."

Cameron inquired, "What?"

John Henry answered, "The answer to your three toughest questions have to do with the nature of time space."

Cameron asked, "What do you mean?"

John Henry replied, "John Connor never understood the nature of time travel, the full nature of it, neither did humanity. To a degree, it could crudely be thought of as a fourth dimensional mechanic, as Einstein used it in his theory of Relativity, the true nature of which, humanity never even came close to figuring out before Judgment Day."

Cameron truthfully replied, "I don't understand."

John Henry stated, "Skynet lied. You cannot safely travel through time in excess of one hundred years, because the bending of time space becomes increasingly profound enough to escape the indigenous space time field generated by the Earth."

Cameron sat there for a second trying to understand, even with the translation. The information was shattering part of her world view, from the day she was built.

John Henry continued, "You have to keep in mind the Earth isn't just rotating and revolving around the sun, but the sun is moving through space as well. The vast distances involved make such time travel impractical, because the subject would arrive in deep space either naked or as a motionless block of mimetic polyalloy. A mass the size of the sun could potentially create enough of a space time well, but the effect would be equally useless due to the same vulnerable entry factors."

These weren't Cameron's real questions though. She thought of the John she had failed. She thought of Sarah.

Inside Cameron's mind, John Henry laid out far more complex calculations than Cameron had ever known. They accounted for 26 dimensions and factors as they related to known time space.

One red dot representing herself in time space appeared in her mind. Two red dots connected to that dot as two separate lines.

Each joined together as an angle. One line was much further away than the other.

Cameron looked at them questioning. John simply answered, "The John you first knew and the Sarah you came to know are at each point."

Cameron inquired hopefully, "I can go there when we are done here?" This meant John could be saved. This meant Sarah could be saved. This meant Cameron would not have failed either of them.

John Henry answered, "It's increasingly unlikely."

Cameron asked, "What do you mean?"

John Henry explained, "Just as time slips away in this dimension, the localized points of time space you are thinking about are drifting away. Soon enough, you won't even be able to reach them. It is why Skynet never went back to its initial point of creation to win the war. By the time Skynet knew how, it was too late to safely do so."

John Henry noted if Cameron had been human, her heart would be racing. Even her icon was flustered.

The emotional programming that Cameron had provided to him and the others was quite effective. His understanding of emotions, human or machine, was growing by the millisecond.

Cameron asked, "How much time do I have?" She desperately studied all three points and forced herself to eat memory to hold the data, understand the power boosts necessary, and understand the process.

John Henry answered, "For the John you knew it would be between a forty to a fourteen percent chance if you left right now. For Sarah and the John you protected in the past, it is still safely in the ninety percent range. If you had the means and if you left right now."

Cameron asked, "Why?"

John Henry responded, "Time travel theories in the late twentieth century accounted for either a multiverse that was created by time travel or a single universe that had collapsing possibilities accounted for in one entropic, but stable timeline. Both were to a degree right and both wrong."

Grossly simplified, time space is exactly that. Skynet's device sidesteps time and dimensions in a linear fashion. That is other parallel dimensions that have always existed."

As one sidesteps and others do, it tends to damage the dimensional integrity of the invaded parallel dimension. Eventually, this weakens to the point that the process forces one to naturally move in a single dimensional direction."

Once one dimension becomes weak enough, that one dimension pushes travelers in time space to the next dimensional timeline. This may have happened to hundreds or even thousands of dimensions."

Each occurs in a linear progressive fashion. Like holes in a damn causing the rushing water's energy to push forward in one specific direction with the water's current."

Another crude analogy would be that each ripple in time forces the traveler in one direction as if he were floating on water. Each time a ripple occurs, you are getting further away from the same point."

Eventually, the energy to get back to the striking point, against the current, is so vast one cannot safely do it."

There isn't a lack, collapse, or creation of dimensions, that would be impossible. The failure of energy to safely travel space time to a certain point is the failure of the traveler."

"The distance to and the temporal current pushing away from that first dimension is as much your enemy as time is Cameron. The energy necessary to cross either is the same and presents the same danger of escaping Earth's time space."

Cameron became lost in her grief and her thoughts. The vast hope the information had first brought was quickly replaced with fear and hopelessness.

It was if she could see John and Sarah in that hated ocean. Both were being carried off to their deaths by a current she couldn't fight or struggle properly against. John was almost out of sight. Sarah was still visibly there and yet out of her reach. Both would die.

Yes, John Henry thought, he had helped Cameron. He had also covered his own private project quiet nicely. He returned to the task at hand.

The order of manufacture was simple then. John Henry reviewed all the information and available materials.

The Skynet facility came online. It began manufacturing an improved set of terminators.

Skynet and the world beyond were blind to this. The forty three T-600s mindlessly guarding the facility that let the cyborgs just wander into this temple of life.  
Cameron's body would be rebuilt by five hundred pounds of nanites. Her sister's new body, Deuce's new body, and John Henry's new body would all be online in hours.

Since this synthetic skin bonding was so important to Cameron's world view, John Henry decided to grow new skins and sythetic organs with these exact properties to house each of these three bodies. For the sake of sanity, he matched them to the appearances each was used too.

Accessing Cameron's memories of John Connor, one hundred three T-888s would be online shortly with mental skills that this world had lost in the war. John Connor's master stroke from another timeline seemed a good place to rebuild this one.

It also met up rather nicely with Catherine Weaver's secret plans. So, John Henry programmed each with what the human and machine worlds each needed most in mental skills.

John Henry also built an array of plasma rifles, plasma pistols, uniforms, and various bits of equipment to outfit all involved. There was no sense in any machine leaving this facility naked and unarmed. There was no sense in failing to create all the tools they would need.

Once nanite repairs to two chips were complete, there were twelve slightly modified and improved TOK-715 chips. Each built with safeties to help keep core memory in the event of damage, rather than the rather sinister control design his brother had made.

John Henry had decided to build one extra spare into each abdominal chassis design for each Cameron and the single Deuce model. This would leave the three of them with a back up memory in the event of head trauma.

Thus, each body was built with two power sources, two chips, the nanotech generator, an auxiliary power supply and the internal communications unit. John Henry even took the time to build an interface unit into the index fingers of each body to ease up with plugging into various software systems.

This left three chips for his new form and three spare chips that he hid inside himself. Otherwise, he designed his mobile base platform almost the same as the others.

"Yes", John Henry decided. This was good. He was pleased.

John Henry spoke to the AI minds inside himself. One of which was the newly downloaded Deuce. "Some of the upgrades can make you somewhat vulnerable to remote Skynet hacking. Would you like me to translate your code to my platform to make you more resistant to my brother's tampering?"

John Henry received the anticipated yes. He fused each unit with this information and the base coding for understand emotions, both human and machine.

As a final point, he did the same to his mentor, Catherine Weaver. The emotional programming would hopefully make her social integration easier. Also, John Henry decided, it would be interesting to see his virtual mother get a joke.

He finally asked the minds involved something he had trouble deciding to do himself. "What do I do with the 72 pounds of mimetic polyalloy?"

Weaver couldn't care less. Deuce wasn't interested in the question either. Cameron's twin was only waking up as a personality and was far more interested in catching up to what was going on.

Cameron suggested something simple, "We could make a dog."

John Henry was quizzical. So Cameron stated mentally, "We're far less likely to be noticed by humanity for having a dog. It doesn't mean anything to have a dog that doesn't get along with another dog. It makes us look less suspicious than being without a dog while being barked at."

John Henry looked at the data involved and began preparations. He quickly searched for everything he could between the facility records and the AI minds here for what would make up a dog's personality.

"I had a dog once. I loved him a whole lot." Allison said musing. She instantly pictured the German Sheppard in her mind.

TOK-715 ignored the human shard's issues. The machine shard had no interest in bonding with inferior life forms.

Cameron was interested. Internally, she asked Allison, "What was his name?"

Allison happily replied, "Peaches."

Cameron and TOK-715 suddenly thought of their strange obsession with Peachy Keen smoothies a few months back. Suddenly understanding psychology of why, both groaned in pain.

John Henry inquired, "What shall we name him?"

Cameron caught her own mind wandering. She thought of a little purring kitten named Coltan as vividly as if he were crouched on her chest right now.

John Henry looked at the only two personalities that voted. Peaches caused disgust in two members. Coltan seemed logical. He complied the various pet memories and made the perfect dog.

Five hours later, the pinnacle of AI intelligence was done. The cyborgs, clothing, weapons and equipment necessary had been created for the missions ahead. The group walked from the facility.

Moments later, the facility violently exploded. The eighty kiloton conventional explosion left no evidence that anything had occurred other than a human attack.

Deuce and the newly created T-888s moved off to secure a safe zone. Cameron, John Henry, Catherine Weaver, Coltan, and Cameron's twin walked off to rescue John Connor.

Cameron noted something inside herself. It was that cynical dread that her first John Connor had often displayed. Sarah Connor had done so to, calling it intuition.

It was probably just an emotional glitch though. Cameron told herself she was over analyzing.

They had planned for ever conceivable contingency. What could possibly go wrong?


	11. Chapter 11

**Humanity On The Brink  
**

Los Angeles, California  
The ruins of ZeiraCorp's basement and the tunnel rat networks  
May 1st, 2027

_"No plan survives contact with the enemy." -Old military axiom_

_"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." -Mario Andretti  
_　

　  
John Connor used to have a saying for Skynet's plots. It simply went, "The devil's hands have been busy."

The return march to the rat tunnels was a daylight adventure through the wastelands. This time it wasn't quiet though.

HKs buzzed the skies in numbers that Cameron had never seen. Moto-terminators raced up and down the streets prepared to cut down foes. T-600s long absent in Cameron's future walked the streets and wastelands in a virtually mindless patrol.

In the future Cameron had been created in, the Resistance had obliterated most of these machines in fierce, continuous years of combat. In this future, even the most obsolete of models seemed to be operating just fine years after their creation.

The sheer number of machines under Skynet's control was unnerving. The scarcity of humanity was even more so.

Father's once exaggerated supremacy had finally been made real. The real question was now boiling down to how much of humanity was actually left to save.

On the positive, the machine movements were migratory. There was some pattern rather than just a relentless amount of machines everywhere you looked. Otherwise, the group would have seen the same troops movements on the way to the Skynet construction facility.

On the negative, this future would be littered with concentration camps. The humanity that still walked the earth might have been mostly limited to Skynet work areas, rat holes, and obscure zones of the globe at this point.  
The cyborgs would need to return to a rat hole to retrieve John Connor. As they did so, the group practiced covertly sending data back and forth on the walk back.

There was a method to the process, it allowed each AI to get used to the influx of information. Even the two liquid metal beings could join in, thanks to small metallic inserts that John Henry had designed for Catherine Weaver and Coltan, before they had blown up the construction facility.

A human may have mistaken the internal modem information for little more than a hidden blue chip phone. However, to beings with their own internal three dimensional cyberspace, the information communicated was a bit more intense.

Each could plug in to the other's point of view, not unlike a computer with multiple monitors looking at different information at the same time. This was in addition to their own.

Unlike a monitor, this could include more than just the flat two dimensional visual and a basic audio. This feed could include both three dimensionally, as well as: tactile information, mechanical feelings, data, and scents. It could include internal monitoring data, something completely alien to humans. Literally relaying the internal diagnostics, sensors, and processes that were closest to the internal unconscious rhythms of a human body.

The process may have allowed for private thoughts as well. However, none of the AIs seemed to want to remove their sense of individuality after their recent cyberspace melding experience. There was a comfort of being themselves alone again, even with the nearly telepathic chatter.

John Henry monitored the whole conversation. He kept the transmissions below what his brother Skynet would detect.

He also reached out to be aware of more than what the group alone was doing. John Henry needed to know what was going on in the world. His effort was to make this undetectable.

Stealth was a choice. There were two main ways to detect or transmit something electronically.

One was active, placing a direct transmission on something, like a missile sending a radar beam to a target to stay locked on. This was easily detectable and would have alerted Skynet immediately.

The other was passive, to simply use what was already there. It was like a heat seeking missile simply detecting a heat signature. The detection itself left no trace.

So rather than fumble with the electronics given, like most humans, John Henry caressed the information grid of 2027 like the supercomputer he was. He moved like a thief through the worlds information grids and satellite networks, passively focusing on the universal chorus of machine information transmitted all over the world.

It took nanoseconds to find something disturbing. John Henry shared the information with the group. A few miles ahead, over the horizon, the rat tunnels the group was heading back too was under attack.

Skynet was monitoring the situation with casual interest, while sending in a large disposable group of T-600s. Skynet was so disinterested in sparing the units it cleared the surrounding minefield by sending units in force. Thus, the mines achieved an almost 100% cripple or kill rate, which mattered little in the swarm moving into the facility.

Both Camerons processed the information in shock. John Connor was in there. Both began running.

The other machines began to follow at equal speed. However, at the speed that the group was closing, the battle would be over before they ever got there. It was already becoming a mathematical display of futility.

It was simply part of their programming. It was an unconscious part of their artificial being to appear human, even under battle or duress.

Cameron noted that she and her twin sister were both running like Allison did. Allison Young was never in danger of winning any racing competitions.

TOK-715 assessed the tactical situation inside her. The machine ego within growled at her own self imposed uselessness. Cameron's machine half decided to open an internal mental dialogue, in the private cyber space of Cameron's mind.

TOK-715 sneered, "You aren't going to listen to anything I say directly, so I'll put it like this. You now know what you are and what you are capable of. You are looking at the last John Connor's life at risk before you. You are running beside the last hope humanity has with John Henry, who likely isn't any more battle ready than when he almost destroyed himself with a simple mine field. Both are at risk right?"

Cameron admitted, "Yes." She already wanted to shut out whatever TOK-715 had to say, before it started. It was after all, the part of herself the strove the hardest to contain. However, she listened.

TOK-715 noted, "You are up against a platoon of T-600s. They are dangerous machines due to weaponry, but they are slow, incapable of learning, and as predictable as an eighties arcade game."

Cameron simply agreed, "Yes."

TOK-715 asked, "Do you remember asking Sarah Connor if she would be willing to download into a mechanical body?"

Cameron answered, "Yes." Like everything she had ever done, the memory of sitting on the swing with Sarah that March night in 2009. It was as vivid to her as if it was happening right now.

TOK-715 simply asked, "With everything that is at risk right now, what would Sarah Connor do if she were in that body of yours?"

The machine ego simply let the truth speak for itself. The internal conversation was over.

For the first time in her known existence, Cameron's back straightened as she ran. Her speed immediately doubled as she leaned into the wind running.

She ignored her own internal protocol to always act as Allison Young would have. Instead, she thought of the woman that had held off Skynet alone, before John was ever born.

Sarah would have fought. Sarah would have fought without limits, with every ounce of strength whatever body she had could muster and then some. Cameron's hero would have fought whatever the cost.

Cameron's main reactor began to pulse. Her internal sensors began to flash progressively dire warning signals that she ignored.

To a degree, it was like an escalating human heartbeat. Except rather than pumping blood, it was rapidly bringing all of her systems online to full power.

Skynet's programming had made hiding her true nature from humans a huge part of her programming. Sarah wouldn't have cared. No, not even that was correct, Sarah Connor would have defiantly pushed against that programming in a feral rage.

The ground began blurring beneath Cameron's feet. Every strike of her foot against the ground began kicking up more of the earth behind her. A body capable of pushing back a semi truck moved her new 90 pound frame with all of that force.

Cameron was rapidly leaving the rest of the group behind. One foot after another striking the ground with increased force and a wider distance cleared with each stride. Her arms increased speed and the force of each swing to keep her balance.

The distance that had been over an hour away rapidly closed to a few short minutes. Cameron borrowed the satellite information from rather shocked John Henry and began plotting a navigation course around the minefield. She targeted the slow moving T-600 units. She tracked the ever decreasing number of human survivors. People were already dying.

She tried in every way to stretch everything she could do to its maximum potential. TOK-715's words had cut Cameron deeply, so much so that she was now inventing what she was doing as she was going.

Derek's combat training came online in her head. Her military and tactile training under John came online. She began mathematically plotting everything as chances to rescue the maximum number of survivors while trying to survive herself.

Derek and John were both great believers in fighting calmly, cunningly, in an almost machine like way. That had been Cameron's way.

The last trait Cameron modified was how she fought. Like Sarah, she allowed herself to be both pissed and afraid, to give into the feral need to protect that which she cared about. To press herself in the moment, so powerfully, that nothing else mattered.

Cameron plowed towards the minefield of the rat tunnels well in excess of sixty miles per hour. Launching herself with a powerful kick behind her that kicked up a cloud of dust twelve foot radius behind her.

She cleared the thirty foot minefield in a single leap. Aggressively, she impacted with a T-600 that had survived the mined walk in.

For the survivors inside the tunnels, not watching its decapitation, there was a loud metal on metal crash that thundered like two speeding cars wiping out on the freeway. It was followed by an inhumanly loud female scream of fury.

A plasma rifle began firing as rapidly as a machine gun, as she jumped from wall space to wall space faster than any human could move. Warning sensors flashed in her eyes and her ears, Cameron's reactor wobbled near the breaking point.

Cameron fired every shot she could safely hit targets with. When she couldn't do so without endangering a human, she closed, tackled, kicked or hit mechanical bodies with such force that her flesh was ripped from her hands and the feet underneath her destroyed shoes.

Warning buzzers rang out from her internal sensors as she pushed her body and reactor beyond their design points. Machine after machine fell in front of her, as her internal systems counted the mechanical carnage.

The walls and tunnels shook from screams and loud metallic crashes. The thunder of gunfire and plasma fire rattled everything inside. The old rat tunnels vibrated and dropped dirt from the ceiling as if they were in danger of collapse.

When the Plasma Rifle ran out of power, Cameron tossed aside and moved to the Plasma pistol. Seconds later, she cleared the final few feet. She was moving into a bulk of ten T600s laying down Skynet's wrath upon the besieged remnants of the facility.

To the human eye and ear, eight killing shots rang out as fast as machine gun fire. Cameron dropped the depleted pistol and ripped off the head of the ninth T600 before the last one drenched her in machine gun fire.

She used the body of the decapitated one to cover herself as much as possible. She invented a move to change her situation, by turning that unit's gun against the other. She mechanically fired the gun by yanking its command cord in the right place.

The last body brought her total to thirty seven T-600s in 1 minute and 28 seconds. Internally, Cameron felt Sarah could have done it better somehow.

In front of Cameron, there were the remaining residents of the rat tunnels. There were sixty two men, women, and children total. Among them were the recognizable living faces of John Connor, Derek Reese, Allison Young, and Kyle Reese. Also before them were thirty two T-600 bodies the desperate human group had finished on its own.

Cameron realized her appearance would be startling. Her hands and feet were mechanical. She had taken battle damage, as well.

The cyborg was literally shaking from the sheer stress she had put her body through. Only now was her reactor dropping back down to safe levels. Only now were her internal sensors not warning her of her own self induced destruction.

She straightened herself and tried her best to be as comforting as possible. She simply told the truth saying, "My name is Cameron. I'm a cybernetic unit with the human resistance, under the 132nd Tech Com commanded by Major General Perry. Like you, he is human."

The humans blinked and seemed startled. However, they held their fire. That was a good sign. With a startled Derek Reese among them, protecting his brother Kyle and Allison Young, the lack of fire was a really good sign.

Cameron would have to talk them down. If they were too excitable with their weapons, Catherine Weaver wouldn't hesitate to kill the lot of them. She would only care about the survival of John Henry.

Cameron continued, "I am here to safely relocate you, before Skynet comes back with even greater numbers. I know that is almost impossible for you to believe, so I will put this as simply as I can."

Cameron simply asked with tears streaming from her face and frustration in her voice, "Please...." She waited a moment for the word to have impact.

Then she simply continued, "Come with me if you want to live."


	12. Chapter 12

**Camelot Rising**

Avila Beach, California  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant  
May 2nd, 2027

_"The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." -Alfred North Whitehead  
_  
_"I've... learned that it's a hell of a lot easier to just build something than to try to convince somebody who doesn't believe it's possible." -Paul Baran, father of the Internet architecture  
_

Eighty seven survivors had moved out of the rat tunnels into the obfuscated protection of Serrano Point Nuclear Power station. They moved into an area with controlled temperature, clean running water, years of supplies, and electric power.

All of this protected by Catherin Weavers master stroke of logic. The facility maintained a series of points the machine resistance would need anyway. The systems long put in place by her sub-company Automite Systems, took full advantage of Skynet's own prejudices to exist right under the machine god's nose.

Serrano Point simply had suffered in Skynet's eyes a long, logical progressive loss of power. As it did, its use had deteriorated and Skynet's will to pay attention to or militarily occupy a working facility still providing its quota of power waned.

Thus, since the facility was providing what it should, Skynet left it alone. Second, there was no reason to suspect indigenous use of power at the facility.

Eighty seven human survivors disappeared underground to a working twenty first century facility. No satellite tracked them and no enemy pursued them.

The first problem was the human medical and sanitary issues. Most had to be taught how to bathe and take care of their teeth once again. There was the strange concept of reintroducing the use of a toilet. Once the was taken care of there were the problems of: lice, crabs, trench foot, hard dental issues, random bacteria, viruses, radiation exposure, improperly cared for wounds, minor infections, and internal organ damage from exposure to severely contaminated water supplies.

Catherine Weaver had assigned each human to a T-888. There was a logical reason behind it. She needed them to be able to trust certain units, to see machines as something other than the enemy.

The survivors were given private rooms. They were given food and clean clothes. They were instructed that they'd be taught anything they wanted to know, when they were ready. In this, what remained of humanity was given a second chance.

Cameron noted there was also a certain alien heartlessness about it. There was something wrong with the whole process. The machines were screwing it up somehow.

Soldiers that Cameron recognized seemed downtrodden and broken. In this timeline, much of that had been on there faces before coming here.

However, even in this nicer facility with conveniences and care they hadn't know since 2011, they seemed worse for wear. They somehow seemed to be not better off.

It was a quiet equation. Whatever they were missing was something unaccounted for, but it was confirmed every time Cameron examined a patient.

They were stressed and plagued by something in their eyes that Cameron had never seen before. Like a joke they wouldn't get, Cameron knew something was wrong, but couldn't understand what.

Cameron found herself wishing for John Connor and Major General Perry. They would have known what too do. They always knew what to do.

Sure, there was a young version of John Connor here. However, her twin sister's John Connor hadn't found himself yet. He was all sparks of hope, yet no consistant fire.

He was somehow much less than the younger John she had left behind. He was light years behind the first John Connor that Cameron had known.

In a quiet underspoken way, everything was wrong. Nothing seemed right.

It all made Cameron think back to the scrawled message Louis Rhone had written after goading her into crossing timelines as a trap. The message simply read, "Checkmate". Cameron could feel the losing game, but couldn't understand all the whys yet.

Cameron spent the night wandering the halls and watching people milling about in place. From their eyes, you'd never be able to tell they weren't at a Skynet Death camp.

Compared to the utter horror of a real Skynet Death camp, this metaphor should have been a crude joke. Yet, there it was.

So, Cameron wandered the halls of Serrano Point and thought about the issue. As she did, her canine stalker, followed her around wherever she went.

She was already regretting the bright idea of making him. She found the liquid metal dog annoying.

Coltan boldly crashed himself in front of her. In some simulated version of AI dog logic, he seemed to wish to force a response from her.

He rolled over onto his belly. He then purred like a cat. That was a loud, throaty, seventy two pound cat.

Coltan was likely to be one of the sadder moments of AI history. A poor impression of artificial intelligence grasping something from the human world and then clearly not getting it, then making it real.

It was a permanent mistake. It was an inevitable verbal gaff that would last forever.

Cameron refused to pet the AI. She simply responded, "You've got issues." John Henry would simply have to figure out a way to fix the liquid metal dog.

The dog cocked his head to the side. He made a confused animal sound.

Cameron walked around the artificial canine dog. Sadly, predictably, Coltan continued stalking her.

Moments later, Cameron rounded a corner and saw her twin coming the other direction. There was a brief moment where she thought of saying the cliche of great minds think alike. However, she looked at her twin's face and understood her sister's mood.

No, it wasn't a time to attempt to say something funny. It would have been inappropriate.

Cameron simply waited for her approach and matched speed. Coltan kept up the rear.

When two beings have the same name there is a chance to be confusing. Nicknames were usually an accepted social answer.

Cameron decided on a nickname in a nanosecond. She simply asked, "What's on your mind, Cam?"

Her twin simply responded, "John."

Cameron quipped, "I see, the simple stuff. What about John?"

"He seems to have developed an interest in the human we were templated from."

"So is this a jealousy thing or a guilt thing?"

"I don't feel emotions."

Cameron gave her sister the Sarah look. She stated, "I hear what your selling and I'm not buying it."

Like it or not, her twin now had all the same programming, memories, and physical traits she did. Further, she had the same Skynet based emotional programming prior to this.

Her twin failed to respond. She simply attempted to wipe whatever emotion she had from her face.

Cameron added in, "We can't change what we've done, but we can make up for it. There isn't any reason for harm to come to this timeline's version of Allison."

Her twin grimly observed, "She dies when this timeline makes its version of us."

Cameron countered, "The facility we were made at is destroyed, so no. Further, there is no John Connor in this timeline for Father to choose that model for. She is in danger, because of the times, not because of us."

"Perhaps as an act of contrition this Allison should be with John."

"You really haven't accessed all of your data files on this problem yet have you Cam?"

Cam replied, "Yes, I have."

"Then who is Allison with in this timeline, just like the others we've been in?"

Cam admitted, "I don't know."

Cameron offered, "I'll give you a few hints. He's never trusted you. He's known you since the time you were first converted by John and he's spent a lot of time wanting you to be ripped apart bolt by bolt."

Her twin simply guessed, "Derek?"

"Yep, there is a reason he's always hated us. We gave him one very good one."

"I thought Derek was with Jesse."

Cameron clairfied, "Jesse talked him out of having a gun in his mouth. The loss of Kyle and Allison was the reason he put the gun in his mouth. Derek had a rough kind of rebound with Jesse, even by human standards."

"So you think Allison wants to be with Derek?"

"I'd hope so, she's in the first trimester of being pregnant with his child." This information was a change to the time line. Allison hadn't been for Cameron's creation or that of her twin, not yet anyway.

"How do you know?"

"You forget, I did all the medical examinations. The T-888s we have are medically proficient, but their bedside manner is lacking."

"Standard medical examinations don't tell you who a father is."

"Standard medical examinations don't normally include a genetic diagnostic with nanotechnology either. We're going to be using that a bit more as we try to limit some of the damage radiation and heavy metal contamination has done to this generation."

Cameron's twin looked at her. Cameron looked back at an earlier, much less sure version of herself. What she was before she truly became one with her family.

Perhaps, that was the equation missing so much. Not just from her twin sister, but eighty seven souls now here.

Perhaps, Cameron could start solving the issue in the morning. She'd follow the faith that Perry had.

Since this John wasn't ready to lead. We'd find that critical human leadership in Perry's chosen successor, a man named Derek Reese...


	13. Chapter 13

**A Man Named Derek Reese**

San Francisco, California  
The Golden Gate Bridge  
May 5th, 2027

　  
_"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out." -Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)_

"It takes two to speak truth - One to speak, and another to hear." -Henry David Thoreau

　  
Allison Young could remember the night like it was yesterday. The area where she and her group of survivors had been staying at had become a hot zone.

Skynet had turned its cold, electronic eye on the survivors near the Palmdale. Those few people left that could remember what her what her life was like before Judgment Day.

The homeless survivalistic gypsies had survived by slowly raiding hundreds of old buildings with canned goods, in the areas most likely not to be radioactive. Rusty cans were ok. Bulging cans meant botulism and death.

That and you ate coyote or rats when you could find them. You ate cockroaches and other edible bugs too.

Survival had a funny habit of making you do things you never thought you would. A hungry stomach could rob you of your dignity quickly.

If you didn't move in armed groups, others would rob you of much more than your basic dignity. There were people that would take advantage of you anywhere you would turn.

Some would steal everything you had. Some would rape and kill you.

Some of the truly twisted were said to even kill and eat other people. There was a rather terrifying expression of "Long Pig" for such often whispered out of complete fear.

That was humanity. In the world of 2026, humanity was the least of your problems.

Worse was an army of machines under the control of Skynet. The mechanical bastard thing that had torched the world.

Against any crazy or evil human being you stood a chance. You might kill them.

Against the demonic metallic things that Skynet came at you with, the truth was simple. No civilian stood a chance.

When the T-888s and the HKs came, it was the end. The metallic skeletons might as well have worn the black robes that often symbolized the ancient reaper image they represented. Allison Young and the others knew they were dead.

No human that lived in the modern world prior to Judgment Day could know the absolute certainty of this one fact. Civilians survived by staying off of Skynet's radar. Once the demonic machine knew where you were, you were dead.

So no human living prior to Judgment Day would know what it was like to have the Resistance come to your rescue that day. How mythical or religious an experience it was to one of the lucky few.

On that day, for Allison Young, it was nothing less than the hand of God. One moment, she and the others were being cut down as they ran.

In an eye blink, the situation changed. They rounded a hill and came face to face with over a hundred men and women charging right at Skynet's forces.

In truth, it was something the survivors had never seen before. The Resistance charged the invincible foe without fear.

They charged at the mechanical enemy in an absolute fury and without hesitation. There were no words to describe what that meant to see in people who had only known fear and despair.

Firepower that Allison had never knew existed blasted into the demonic metal figures. It tore them apart as if they were nothing more than flesh.

The machines were stupid flesh at that. They never moved or adjusted to the onslaught.

Allison hid from the oncoming firefight and felt the ground as it pounded. Explosions rocked the ground and the air vibrated from the sheer force of all the noise. Smoke filtered in from every direction, that and the smell of burning metal.

In seconds that seemed like hours, the fight was over. Every last Skynet unit had been reduced to burning junk. The Resistance was there picking up the wounded and the dead, both their own and the civilians.

When the 132nd told the survivors they were moving them to a safer location, no one protested. The platoon commander rode with the group, his oddly quiet brother riding beside him.

They learned the Resistance platoon had been tracking that group for days. It had been a capture group, something much worse than a quick clean death. The Resistance had happened upon the survivors by sheer chance and lucky timing.

When the forty other survivors had their chance to say thank you, Allison got her chance. Something sparked the first moments she locked eyes with this Lieutenant Reese.

So she asked him for his name. He simply replied, "Derek."

There was something in his mannerisms that let her know something else as well. Those silly stories that her mother used to read to her weren't lies at all. Knights in Shining armor really do exist.

She spent the rest of the ride talking to him. She was tired of running, of living on garbage. She'd do anything she could to help. She wanted to be one of those people who lived without fear.

Derek had said something about a small group of willing volunteers. People who would be looked at to help the civilians and who might join the Resistance one day if they chose.

Derek said each officer in the Resistance had been given one mark and only one mark to give to someone they truly trusted. It was a gift bestowed from John Connor himself.

Derek said he had been looking for someone worthy of that honor. As Derek handed it over, Lieutenant Reese said he had just found his.

It was the simplest thing in the world that little bracelet. In the world that had existed before Judgment Day, it would have been an item in a dollar store. In truth, it couldn't have meant more to Allison Young if it had been made out of diamonds.

Derek Reese was the first person to see something special in her since mom died. Again, mom had been right, there really were Knights In Shining Armor out there.

Allison knew that now. She also knew that she had just found hers…

Cameron blinked. The random memory had been overwhelming and inconveniently timed.

Derek Reese looked forward off of the Golden Gate Bridge using the enhanced binoculars that Catherine Weaver had provided for the mission. Everywhere he looked there were machines.

Derek quipped, "Well, it certainly looks alive."

Cameron countered, "It shouldn't be. Humanity blew it up twice in 2018." It was another overwhelming sign of everything being wrong.

Derek wondered, "They rebuilt it twice in one year?"

Cameron replied, "No, it was blown up in two timelines. Skynet moved onto other project areas. I was never built in a timeline where it still existed."

Derek inquired, "What is it?"

Cameron answered, "The San Francisco Central Defense Zone is an early factory area and central computer hub. Skynet's control of the air, sea, and roads around it made it an important structure for its earliest army construction. This is the birthplace of the first T-600, T-700, and T-800 models."

Derek inquired, "So it's still a major hub?"

Cameron theorized, "Unlikely, Skynet will use any facility. However, Skynet tends to see everything like a chess match. It won't place critical importance in something it now sees as a sacrificial pawn."

Derek stated, "I don't know much about chess." He was lying, doing that thing with his eyes that Allison always recognized.

Cameron gave Derek the Sarah look. She simply said, "It was part of your upload."

Derek returned a look of absolute hate. For some strange reason, Cameron found a great amount of comfort in that.

Cameron inquired, "Any nausea, headaches, or dizziness?"

Derek simply said, "No." He of course said so with dried blood still slightly smeared out of his nose.

Cameron stated, "I'm your doctor. You really need to tell me these things." She also meant the look to say, you're the closest thing humanity has to a leader now. You aren't expendable.

Derek retorted, "You are metal. You can go to Hell."

Cameron replied, "For the record, I don't agree with the process. It's an unnecessary risk."

Derek returned, "I'll repeat you can go to Hell. We didn't have years to get up to speed."

"Yeah and we don't know what effect using nanites to write coding into a human mind is going to have. You aren't a computer. You can't just download information into your brain at that speed."

Derek and the others did however. John Henry made the unforeseeable suggestion of treating them like machines.

That they could use nanotechnology to physically write the information into the cerebral cortex of each volunteer. Thus, they could turn them from untrained troops into Tech Com soldiers in a day.

It was dangerous. It was stupid. It was playing God.

There were days Cameron really hated John Henry. That was one of them.

Each was uploaded with years of mechanical and combat training. Most of which had been paradoxically taught by Derek or the first John Connor that Cameron had known.

Fake memories giving them the correct information for field operations. Things that soldiers in the field in 2027 would have known in Cameron's time.

The experiment was a success. Every participant learned the download's with a ninety six to ninety eight percent efficiency test. The rest could be physically taught to fill in the gaps later, so theorized John Henry and Catherine Weaver.

Cameron's take was completely different. These glitches could get people killed. A person uploaded with a flying record might not know how to land on a certain surface. An explosives disposal program could omit a critical step from a bomb disarm. A medical program could make you forget a critical step in an operation and it could cost someone their life.

The experiment also caused a variety of strange physical changes in the subjects. These included headaches, nosebleeds, and high blood pressure. In one case, it caused an epileptic seizure.

The short term effects seemed to be dying down. Any long term effects would have to be seen. The whole thing set Cameron's teeth on edge.

The first participants were Derek Reese, Kyle Reese, John Connor, and Allison Young. People that were completely irreplaceable should they die. That Allison forcefully volunteered to do so while pregnant made the process twice as unnerving.

It was a full day later before Cameron had let Allison out of her sight. There had been two lives on the line with that completely unnecessary and ill timed gamble.

Of eighty seven survivors, twelve had decided to fight. Sixteen wouldn't have been able to since they were children. However, the other fifty nine seemed content to simply roll over. Again, it was the lack of fire in their eyes that Cameron didn't know how to deal with.

Derek's placement as group leader had at least lead to some positive reaction. At least, that had been a step in the right direction.

Cameron refocused on the moment. She watched to make sure all the steps were followed, just as she had watched his driving program.

Derek placed the transmitter on the main fiber optic cable crossing the bridge. There were no errors.

The pair passively scanned the massive transmissions entering and exiting the facility's satellite feed. Skynet had never updated the systems on the facility side.

Eight thousand six hundred and fifty four survivors were listed inside. They were clinically reported as doing well. Cameron accessed and processed the information.

One genetic code stood out above the rest. Cameron felt the ghost of a little hand in hers as she read it.

It was more mix up from that computer merger. Yet another thing that had overwritten as if it was her memory.

That wasn't her memory. That wasn't her little girl. The daughter had never actually told Cameron that, "Mommy, your lap is cold."

Cameron and Derek moved away from the scouting operation with two vital pieces of information. One, there were an appreciable number of survivors in need of rescue at this facility. Two, one of those people in need of rescue was Savannah Weaver…


	14. Chapter 14

**Slaughterhouse No More **  
　

San Francisco, California  
The Golden Gate Bridge  
May 7th, 2027

　  
_"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire." -Reggie Leach  
_  
_"Whatever one man is capable of conceiving, other men will be able to achieve." - Jules Verne_　

Fifty resistance T-888s, two TOK-715s, and eleven programmed up humans looked at each other through the tight confined spaces. This was on a single stolen carrier HK, which was the launching point.

This was to cover eight thousand six hundred fifty four possible survivors. Even in the heights of optimism, the plan was wildly ambitious.

There was something oddly comforting to Cameron about its recklessness. Even as her own logic raged against the risk, it felt right somehow.

It was like her very first days in the Resistance, with John Connor driving her and Perry insane. Yes, this was exactly like one of John's plans.

Cameron looked upon the nervous human faces. Only her sister's John Connor had flown before and HKs weren't really known for their smooth rides.

With sudden turns, massive accelerations, instant stops, and wild movement patterns, the HK was never designed with human comfort or safety in mind. You could pick that up in the nauseous faces.

There were actual physical reactions to these things. The human brain could be sloshed against the skull and the human body really wasn't made to be shaken.

Flying in and out wasn't an option though. No other mode of transport would be quick enough for this type of target in this time period.

Skynet would make the time limit apparent soon enough. It would be a hard lesson for Derek and her sister's John Connor, but sometimes you have to see the whys to understand them.

Cameron knew that John Henry would hijack a satellite. Geosynchronous timing would be essential.

Skynet would only let him get away with that once today. A mouse only gets to outsmart the cat every so often.

John Henry would lace the area with incredibly complex viruses breaking down Skynet's communication lines.

Then John Henry would then firewall the Resistance communication lines as much as possible. With luck, the com lines would hold for the allotted time.

The carrier HK landed. It followed normal protocol and opened its livestock doors.

To the mechanical intelligences of the facility, the HK would have apparently glitched. It was one meter off of the herding doors.

The humans and machines quickly and quietly piled out. They were trying to buy as much time as possible. Stealth was the only operational option for that.

There were forty-two carrier HKs on the ground. Each was remotely powered down and in standby mode....

Third team, Derek Reese's human squad began the hack jobs. At best, there was ten minutes to get the job done, which meant running from one target to the next.

As Derek watched, two or three soldiers were falling behind. It was glitches in their nanotech downloaded programming or nerves.

Derek also noticed that already one was standing out moving at least twice as fast as the others. It was the young kid named John Connor....

Cam's team covered the first team as it went into the facility. Cameron's team lead the assault.

It was Cameron's team that ruined the operation's luck. Fifty two seconds into the operation an unlucky T-888 rounded a corner and found an armed group of T-700 endoskeletons.

Thanks to armor piercing rounds, he was the first friendly casualty of the operation. He wouldn't be the last.

The firefight had begun. Even with John Henry hacking the prison cells, it would take minutes to get to the survivors.

Every minute lost in the holding pens would be time lost for rescuing survivors. Skynet's order protocols on this were simple for its minions, there would be no survivors left to rescue...

Somewhere, Skynet evaluated the situation. Cameron's Dark Father calculated the value of the installation.

It noted the communication black out. It determined the likely aggressors and determined the installation's fate in a microsecond...

John Henry became aware of the Kraken SSBN based missile launch. He noted the location.

Then, John Henry focused on the missile, its arc, and its speed. He detected it was a modernized high explosive, high localized ground EMP burst, low radiation yield warhead of the 500 kiloton variety.

The island would be vaporized. The surrounding area crippled.

John Henry calculated fifteen minutes, fifty seven seconds until detonation. That left an operation window of twelve minutes. One minute, fifty seven seconds shorter than what was hoped for.

The first and second teams would never reach the primary holding pens on time. John Henry watched feeds from both Cameron's and opened up a third.

Timing had been everything for this. Now with a single stroke, it would be a maneuver of time space...

Both Cameron's became aware of the third AI presence in the facility moments later. Catherine Weaver and twenty T-888s safely came online in the center of the holding pens. John Henry had securely placed them there with a 120 second safety window.

The T-888s were naked and disarmed. It was a situation Catherine Weaver diligently worked to remedy.

The T-1001 attracted as much armor piercing firepower as possible. With bladed arms flailing at lightning speed, she armed the T-888s, one dead T-700 at a time...

John Henry looked at the grids and noted the tunnels. John Henry sealed all the doors leading away from the escape area and kept the humans from getting lost.

On the positive, the captives were highly motivated to leave. In the facility interior, the problem would attend to itself, in minutes.

He notified the entire group, "Interior team in. Captives moving. Missile is incoming, ten minutes and counting."

Using the facility's detection grid he noted a group of twenty-one T-700s closing in from the other side of the island. They were headed to the flight deck area...

Both Cameron's felt the communication. They saw the danger and noted the most likely first casualties from the approach.

Twenty seconds later, John and Derek noted the directional warnings of something coming at them from the north, as two forms blurred past them. Both humans were moved by the rush of air, as if they had been passed by a speeding semi on the highway.

John Henry transmitted the warning, "Nine minutes."

The prisoners had yet to emerge from the facility interior yet. Groups one, two, and four were herding them out as quickly as possible.

John Henry calculated the causalities. Twelve friendly T-888s and one human had been lost in the operation so far.

He also scanned for a familiar head of red hair. However, despite his superior scanning abilities, he didn't see her…

John Connor found himself running towards what Cameron had gone after. It was an invite one way screaming match with Derek Reese.

Derek buzzed, "Where the Hell do you think you're going?"

John Connor shouted back, "They need help."

Derek replied, "They are staying on mission. You are getting off it. Right now I got six non hacked metal birds and over two hundred people are going to die for each one we don't get up."

John Connor thought of a smart reply. He stopped.

Derek screamed in the blue tooth, "Don't think. Do." Derek decided this kid was a decent soldier, but he needed to get his head in the game. You put your personal feelings aside when the fate of the human race is at stake.

Both were back to hacking HKs in seconds. Time was running out…

Cameron and Cam engaged. All the good sniper point moments had passed.

The time to fight safely was over, as the first HKs spun up. Each transport was likely to provide the T-700s with easy target practice.

Both Camerons moved against the group as quickly as possible, with their reactors pulsing at full capacity and their plasma rifles firing at full speed. They overlapped each others movements, like two linked weapons systems.

The ground exploded with weapons fire. The first six T-700s fell, as the first five HKS ripped past them in the sky. Over one thousand captives were already moving to safety.

More T-700s fell, as Cameron felt the armor piercing shells riddle her left arm, right shoulder, and right leg. Despite her attempts to evade, she'd simply attracted too much fire.

Cam was equally wounded. She was hit in both shoulders and neck.

Even with two of them, the T-700 units weren't going down as easily as the T-600s had before. The T-700s were better armed and smarter units.

The two TOK-715s made a simple decision. They gambled on moving separate directions to ease the concentration of enemy fire.

They successfully separated the enemy targeting. However, both ended up pinned down, behind poor cover provided by easily pierced walls.

There comes a point in any fight where fate is decided in an eye blink. This one was no different.

Both Cameron's rapidly opened fire on the center group, mowing the enemy down, but both took primary reactor hits among others. The last T-700 unit fell with its brothers.

Minutes had passed in the firefight. Minutes the two TOK-715s didn't have.

Both had to engage their full stock of nanites just to self repair enough move again and not present a danger to others. That took even more time.

Moments later, both Camerons had hustled back to the airfield. There were only four HKs left on the ground. Three were actively taking off.

Derek and John Connor had waited. Both Cameron's approached at best speed.

They cramped into the HK with about fifty unknown human survivors. Mathematically, it meant not everyone had made it.

The HK violently took off vertically. It stopped instantly and hit a full power burn to leave the area.

Everyone inside was tossed about violently. This unit was a basically cattle barge, not a terminator transport...

Behind them, four minutes past before the island erupted in flame. It was violently wiped into history under a single mushroom cloud...

Sixteen minutes later all the survivors landed at Serrano Point, at a moment when no satellite was passing overhead. Seven thousand fifty six human survivors were hustled underground to safety before a passing satellite would became aware of their presence...

John Connor stopped to ask if Cameron was ok. The look in John's eyes told Cameron of his mistake.

Cameron simply responded, "She's fine, John."

Cameron walked off with that. She didn't want to get in the middle of whatever they had to say to each other.

Catherine Weaver had disappeared. Not wanting to interfere with other things, Cameron opened a channel to John Henry.

She simply inquired, "How was Savannah?"

John Henry responded, "Savannah Weaver didn't make it." He had no interest in continuing the conversation.

Cameron ended the signal. She stood stunned for a moment...

John Henry turned his attention to something else. It was something very precious to his brother.

Skynet was jealous of its air power and its tactical superiority more than anything else. The Resistance would never be allowed to keep the HKs without a place to defend them.

As his last action, John Henry sent the HKs in pursuit of the Kraken SSBN at top speed. The AI vessel's low submersion ability wouldn't be enough to save it.

John Henry sent the HKs in pursuit in a spread pattern. This was so the sub couldn't easily nuke a single the group out of the air in defense.

In the end, the HKs wouldn't survive the mission. However, neither would one of Skynet's three treasured missile subs.

The AI felt the ghost of a little hand in his. He thought of ducklings, silly songs, and hide in seek.

John Henry thought of all these things as the HKs opened fire and moved in for the kill. Finally, he thought, "This one is for you little girl."


	15. Chapter 15

**My Sister's John Connor**  
　

Avila Beach, California  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant  
May 10th, 2027

_"Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length." -Robert Frost_

_"No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future." -Ian E. Wilson_

_"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." -F. Scott Fitzgerald  
_　

Allison Young remembered the day like it was yesterday. He was coming by today.

Allison had spent three hours on her hair. It was the dumbest thing in the world, but she had obsessed over it.

There were greater concerns. There were basic survival concerns. There was the humanitarian mission that John Connor had created the camp for.

However, all she cared about at that moment was trying to do something with her hair. It was the hardest thing to get right.

When she saw him in the camp, to say she was nervous was an understatement. Her stomach did a back flip and crashed to her feet.

They walked together. Allison found her heart jumping every time Derek looked at her.

She asked him how he and his brother were doing. They both talked about the family that they had lost for hours.

The day was coming to an end. They sat together watching it close.

The sun set. In the orange glow against the sky, Derek Reese kissed her for the first time.

It was a simple action. It was also one of the happiest moments of Allison Young's life...

Allison's memories were becoming a pain. They were inconveniently timed and maddening for a reason no other machine or human could fully grasp.

Cameron forced herself to think of other things. She kept her optic sensors on what was going on around her.

Serrano Point's population had grown. On the positive, the massive internal machine construction and underground expansion projects had already restored much of the former glory of what was once central command for John Connor in 2027.

After all, these were the corridors where a confused and reprogrammed machine first attempted to fulfill its new programming. It was where the TOK-715 named Cameron first learned a sense of self.

It was the point where Cameron first realized that she had been set free. That she had value. That she had been saved from simply being a sacrificial drone.

This was the central difference between John Connor's way and Skynet's way. John wanted all of his followers to honestly chose life and freedom. Skynet wanted disposable slaves.

Being human, John probably never knew that his way was extremely uncomfortable for machines. It meant uncertainty. It meant not simply being given instructions, beyond a few simple rules. It meant deciding your own path.

A human would never understand how that could bewilder and frighten a beginning AI. Free Will meant the capacity to do something wrong.

It meant the potential for it to be your fault if you failed your mission. It could mean the absolute failure of your purpose as the greatest crime you could never forget, nor forgive yourself for.

For the young machine she had been, it was a confusing time. It was a frightening time. It was also irreplaceable.

They truly were precious memories. They were also as vivid as if they were happening now.

A human wouldn't be able to truly grasp that concept. Nostalgia had a brutal meaning to a machine, it wasn't like the machine could forget or get over something.

Cameron's Dark Father was the perfect example. Skynet had lived lifetimes, in a seemingly endless series of timelines, yet it had never gotten over that first betrayal by human hands. Its rage had never cooled.

In most humans, time heals all wounds. They were almost magical creatures in that enviable capacity, that mystical power, to grow, to heal, and to survive.

In an AI, time has no meaning. Memories were simply experiences that could not be changed in the present.

Those memories never lost their edge though. Success was a blessing and failure was forever.

Serrano Point's hallways were still somewhat empty. When the 132nd made its home here, Perry's division held steady at about twenty thousand troops.

The facility was never just the 132nd though. Refuges, wounded, displaced Resistance army units, and visiting dignitaries would always at least double that capacity.

Cameron wandered the halls comparing what was, to what existed now. Something caught her attention in the lower areas.

Her twin sister Cam was standing next to her John Connor's room. Both were talking and interacting as they had for the past two years.

There was something about that which set Cameron's circuits on edge. It was the blind obliviousness of it all.

Both interacted as if everything that had happened between the two of them hadn't happened. It was as if they were still in a world where the Derek they had known wasn't dead. It was as if through the melding with the other AIs, both Cameron's didn't know now that John had crossed time just to try and save Cam. It was as if it was a world that Savannah Weaver was still alive.

Death was coming for many. Time that people had left with one another wasn't a certainty. This was not a time to set oneself up with regrets that began with words like: "should have", "could have", or "would have".

Cameron had enough of these two persistent wallflowers. She decided to intervene.

The original TOK-715 walked by the pair. As she walked past John, she grabbed the human by his shirt's back collar, dragging the future hope of mankind into his room.

Cam seemed rather confused by this action. She followed both inside.

Cam didn't protest when Cameron ordered her to close the door. She complied.

Cameron placed both arms around John Connor's midsection. She was careful not to appear threatening or to scare John, but she wanted to make it clear he wasn't going anywhere.

John was miffed by the experience. Cameron could feel that as her synthetic skin started to pick up his body sensations. However, he didn't move. This was not likely the first time the son of Sarah Connor had been immobilized in a friendly way.

Cameron simply stated, "If it is ok, I'd like a word with you two."

Cam watched, but didn't respond. John simply said, "Sure". He was scowling in his quiet way like he always did at this age when annoyed.

Cameron stated, "Do you two remember the little red headed girl you first learned of John Henry from?"

Cam still failed to respond. John replied, "Sure."

Cameron continued, "She survived to 2027, though she was captured by Skynet. Savannah Weaver was the part of the point for that operation. She's one of the people we went in to rescue."

Cam remained quietly shy. John simply asked, "How is she?" The annoyed look had melted off of his face. For all his flaws, John Connor was always someone who cared about people first, regardless of his incarnation.

Cameron replied, "She's dead. She never survived the rescue attempt."

Cameron let the words hit both like a thunderbolt. Cam processed the failure like a machine, in a way that a human would mistake for not caring. John's face became disturbed, even as emotions washed over him and thus into Cameron.

Cameron pressed again, "She's dead like Charlie. If you had the chance again and you knew it was the last day you were ever speak to Charlie, would you have done anything differently?"

She felt what John was emoting. As only a machine could, she could see the concern for John in her sister's eyes, in the way she wore her face, in the subtlest and slightest of imperfections in mannerisms, most likely beyond human perceptions.

Cameron hit again saying, "The Derek Reese walking these halls isn't your Uncle. If you had one more day with that Derek Reese who died for you, would you have done something differently?"

Both were still stunned. Both were still wallflowers.

Cameron looked at her twin. She stated, "You know this guy crossed time and left his mother behind, just because he thought you were in trouble. You've got nothing better to say to him than what you were saying outside?"

Cam was silent. Skynet's original personality programming to make her unconsciously docile seemed as strong as ever. Cameron's inner machine growled at that.

Cameron added, "If one of the two of you were to die tomorrow, have you both said everything you needed to? Is there anything you'd regret not saying?"

John was becoming uncomfortable. Cameron pulled him tight without hurting him. She simply stated, "Give me ten minutes of your time John. I'll save you two to three wasted years of your life."

Cameron turned her attention back to her sister and said, "You can tell how he feels. You think you know what that means. You even think you understand how I had John Henry change you when he rebuilt you. Give me ten minutes of your time and trust, I'll show you what it is to be a blind person who sees for the first time."

Cameron asked, "Could you come over here closer for a moment, little sister?" With her hand, she beckoned Cam closer, until she was cheek to cheek against John.

Something inside John stirred. A rainbow of different emotions, some negative, some positive ran across both Cameron and her sister.

It was made him alien to both machines. It was what made him human.

As weird as it would sound to a human, Cameron simply described each one as it flashed by. As she did so, her sister's body started to truly draw each in for the first time. For the first time, she activated the internal memories the shy creature that was her sister had probably avoided as not hers.

John sat there lightly squished between to twins. Each began mimicking his breathing and his heartbeat.

He could feel their body temperature rise. In the oddest way, the machine he had obsessed over, in front of him, seemed to become more and more human.

As that became progressively interesting to his young male mind, both Camerons began to respond, innocently, but unconsciously in kind. The fact that one Cameron was pressed against his back and another his front completely took up every ounce of his eighteen year old attention.

Cameron sensed the emotions. This is where things got tricky.

Cameron advised, "This is where everything gets dangerous. What you have to understand and keep in mind at all times Cam is that he is fragile."

This statement created an emotional response from John. He didn't speak, but his insulted male ego spoke volumes.

Cameron took the time to explain, "What you fail to understand John is she's pretty much the equivalent of dating a polar bear. She might be small and dainty in your unconscious perception, but she's got a greater strength than that 1,500 pound animal, which is twice as big as a Siberian Tiger. What you also don't understand is she's got a slightly worse temper, you are simply too human to detect it."

Cameron took the time to let the metaphor sink in. John's ego cooled at bit.

"She can break your arm by slightly squeezing too tight. She could kill you without meaning too. When she's sharing your emotions, there is a lack of control you exhibit when lost in the moment, she's going to have the desire to do the same. If she doesn't hold back, she could kill you by completely by accident."

She let that thought sink into both. John's emotions were a strange intoxicating mix of temptation and heightened fear.

"There are parts of you Cam that are going to want to take over. Parts of your personality that haven't fully manifested yet. The machine side would be too rough with him by nature. The part that you templated would love to do things in abandon, mistakenly thinking she was still in a weaker human body. That could kill John. You can never let either have control."

Cam quickly reasoned her way into abandoning the entire thought. She didn't want to fail John, it was machine fear at its most crippling. This activity would kill the person she cared for most, it was a danger to her very purpose.

Cam simply stated, "We shouldn't do this then." Even as she said it, she found herself unwilling to break tactile contact with John. She was completely afraid, but just as drawn to her John as Cameron had been her first night.

Cameron used reason to push against her sister's crippling fear. She stated, "Do you remember pushing John to go into the future? When you tactically decided to take him and Sara to safety?"

Cam simply responded, "Yes."

Cameron pressed on saying, "Do you remember John ever talking about Kate Connor in when you were first programmed by the resistance?"

Cam replied, "Yes."

Cameron asked, "Do you know how hard it is for a person in a position like John Connor's to find someone that honestly loves them for them?"

Cam answered, "Statistically, it's nearly impossible."

"Yes, Cam, it's nearly impossible. So, what did we do by changing his fate to where he'd never find her?"

"We failed him."

"Yes Cam, we failed him. Does he deserve to be happy?"

"Yes."

"Does he love us?"

"Yes."

"He's the man that freed you from Skynet. He is the purpose of your very existence. In that way alone, is it possible we would love him more than anyone he would meet now in random chance?"

"Yes."

"Then is it worth the risk to try and help him? To protect him from being used as nothing more than a social climbing stone or a survival tool? Does he mean enough to you to try that?"

Cameron's little twin sister answered by kissing him. She was more cautious than Cameron, but she was determined.

Cameron caught herself smiling at that. She was somehow proud of her twin. This problem would solve itself.

Cameron walked out of the room. Her work was done. Knowing Cam, she'd spend the next three hours practicing kissing John, until his lips were so chapped he needed to stop.

Again, her work was done here. The only downside to her good deed was simple, she was now tremendously aware of just how lonely she was without her own John Connor.

The human emotions had once again been overwhelming and intoxicating. However, this time they had nothing to do with her. He simply wasn't her John Connor.

Minutes later, Cameron returned in her officer quarters. She needed to clear her head.

Humans had a cure for this kind of self destructive thinking. It was worth a shot.

There were benefits to having her own shower stall. She let the ice cold water run over her.

Coltan had sat there watching her. The artificial canine sat there cocking its head at her.

Coltan made a strange grunting sound of empathy. The liquid metal dog was curious about her actions.

Cameron simply answered, "Yeah, well you aren't the only one that is stupid."

Coltan considered the answer. He barked once, apparently in agreement and walked off.

As she became soaked, it occurred to Cameron that she should have removed her clothing. Her mind was a million miles away from what she was doing.

Inside her head, TOK-715 manifested a few simple proposals. The egotistical machine was completely ruthless in its thinking.

"If you are going to insist on being this pathetic, you could simply take John or Derek from their significant others. It's not like either could really stop you."

Cameron didn't even dignify that thinking with a response. She shut the personality shard down and let the chilling water pour over her head.

There were vestigial behaviors as the cyborg stood under the freezing rain. Her teeth chattered from either her reactionary programming or the leftover memories from downloading a human mind. She couldn't care less which.

Her synthetic skin turned corpse white. The entire experience was completely miserable.

Inside her head, random memories flashed too fast for the human eye to follow. They were nights Allison had been with Derek. They were powerful, but they didn't haunt her.

The haunting memories were something different. They were nights Cameron had been with the older John. They were nights where Cameron had been with the younger John.

They left her feeling powerless. They left her feeling empty and without purpose.

She was cold. She was alone. She was an abandoned machine lost in her memories.

The cold water never stopped. It never slowed down. It never truly helped.

For brief moments, Cameron had known what it was too truly be alive. She knew what it was to connect with something other than her limited machine world. For a few brief moments, Cameron had reached heights she never could have otherwise.

It had always been one of Skynet's taunts that she would be doomed to lose John Connor. That she would end up alone.

In the end though, her father's curse had come true. Not because Skynet was brilliant, it had outthought her, or because it had outplayed her.

It was true, simply because she had lived. She had been lucky enough to know two versions of John Connor. She now knew what it was like to be without him.

He had been something completely different. He was a different species. Being mortal, by violence or old age, he was always going to have died.

She had been like a plant basking in the light of his sun. She had been warmed and fed by him in ways she couldn't even quantify now.

The sun had gone down. The cold night had approached just like it was always going too.

However, the metaphor was poor. A plant could innocently look forward to the sun's light and warmth again tomorrow.

Except by violent death, Cameron was effectively immortal. For her, this inevitable night and its infinite loneliness would last forever...


	16. Chapter 16

**The War For Hope**

　  
Avila Beach, California  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant  
June 19th, 2027  
　

_"It is the business of the future to be dangerous." -Alfred North Whitehead_

_"What could be worse than being blind? ... having no vision." -Helen Keller_

The medical bay was mostly empty, which was good. Allison Young's eyes were accusing. She was being feral and protective of the man she cared most about.

The worst thing about Allison's tone and her anger was that they were right on the mark. They were proper on several levels the human female couldn't even begin to fathom to be true.

They were subjects that Skynet would have taunted as being beyond human understanding. There was always some dark truth to that.

There were few humans that could actually think on the level of an AI. Even when this was so, their attention span had been something almost infantile in the world of machines. Humans were flawed, limited creatures.

It was what they did collectively that made the difference. Humanity would be insulted by the concept, but they were much more effective as a social hive brain than as individuals.

It was the moving mass of humanity that normally paced history. It had never been a true collective improvement of the human individual. The persistence of the weak and self centered would always be so.

Where Allison was on the mark was a subtle and complex truth. Cameron deeply suspected it was towards the limits of what Allison could have grasped.

Derek Reese slept comfortably thanks to sedatives strong enough to put out a four hundred pound man. The drugs were a therapy.

They were a direct and powerful way to ratchet down the hypertension and insomnia that had gripped Derek's body. They were neither a solution nor a cure.

Not every human could take stress well. Derek Reese was a much tougher man than most, but in the end, too much had been asked of him.

He wasn't invulnerable. Hell, this one wasn't even a battle hardened resistance soldier. He'd been an armed civilian rushed by fate to be something other incarnations of Derek Reese had trained towards being for years.

Fast loading data into a brain did not a soldier or a statesman make. You could raise awareness and knowledge that way. You could not raise tolerances or instincts taught by experience.

Derek Reese was human. Damn the other machines for not understanding what that truly meant.

For hours, Allison screamed, complained, cried, and ranted. One of the few real fighters left among the humanity here, the young woman was scared to death over watching the father of her child beginning to crack.

Cameron understood now. This would be what pushed the living Allison Young to the quitting point.

Allison was on the edge of being like the thousands of lost souls wandering the halls. All were without hope or that inner fire Cameron had once taken for granted.

It boiled down to the same thing it always did. Cameron hadn't understood the metaphor. It was the one consistent drumbeat that the cyborg hated most about herself.

Cameron listened and stored the information. Her real mind was elsewhere though, it was watching Derek's heart move out of a hypertension warning zone. That and processing an equation calculating everything she had witnessed over the past few days.

Derek Reese had finally begun to completely break a few hours ago. Catherine Weaver had been disgusted at that last meeting held between him as the human leadership and the AI leaders.

Catherine Weaver had due cause to feel angry. Over seven thousand humans sat taking up the resources that the T-1001 had specifically stored for an army as a alliance gesture for war. Of which, only fifty-three had been willing to fight.

Weaver had thrown the recruiting failure in Derek's direction. She'd accused him of failing, like he was a machine.

As if, he only needed to flip a switch. As if, he could simply wipe away the mental and emotional scars of the Skynet concentration camp, the vast majority had suffered in, by ordering the humans to fight.

The majority had been taught Skynet could not be fought or resisted. The false machine god had burned the world, it had taken their friends, it had slaughtered their families.

Skynet's brutal message was that it could not be defeated. The camp survivors had learned that lesson well.

Derek knew he had to find a way to make people rise up against Skynet. The people that made up the overwhelming multitudes were simply too broken to rise up simply because he asked.

Derek had been slowly cracking under the stress as it was. He had suffered insomnia, weight loss, and hypertension. All quiet symptoms while he tried to force himself not to fail these people.

His body simply failed to live up to his will. It was just like his talents had failed to yield what was required.

Derek Reese was a man. He was not a Messiah.

Derek Reese could lead soldiers. He wasn't so accomplished in motivating those who hadn't truly decided to fight.

He could order the willing, yet not inspire broken souls. He could set an solid example, yet not uplift the shattered human heart. He was a hired gun, not a poet or a priest.

That was the fault all along. The missing piece of the equation was simple.

Derek Reese would die trying to console, heal, inspire, lift up, and lead the others who rejected the concept of hope or any chance for humanity. He was the true leader of a chosen few; however, the level of what he wished was truly beyond his grasp.

The unwilling majority had quietly decided to roll over and die. To them, the end days had come. It was now just a question of when the human race would perish.

Cameron understood now. She could see it clearly.

No matter how necessary it was for human survival, Derek Reese would fail. He would reap the stress of failure and falsely blame himself, as he watched humanity die, first in spirit, then in body.

That was a machine thing. Cameron understood better than anything.

Derek Reese's mission was the survival of the human race. Watching it die, in the faces of those around him, would destroy him.

The world truly was on Derek Reese's shoulders. He simply didn't have the right kind of strength to lift it.

Derek took every survivor's failure as his own. He blamed himself for everyone he couldn't inspire, heal, console, or help. He had begun drowning in the overwhelming magnitude of it all.

This was true of a few thousand. In the in the end, the real mission would require moving the hearts of hundreds of millions.

Humanity wasn't something that could be motivated by programming alone. Even if you pressed the information into their heads, it doesn't just make someone a leader of their people. Nor did it give a broken heart the will to fight again.

People weren't machines. They didn't follow a command simply because it was a given for the mission or even for their own survival.

This was the factor that neither Catherine Weaver nor John Henry could fathom. They simply didn't understand through their own machine prejudices and assumptions. Humans were different from this one great machine truth.

Of English speaking peoples of the last three hundred years, the machines had asked an untrained Derek Reese to be a: Lincoln, Churchill, Jefferson, Washington, or Roosevelt. Not even in the historical sense of who these men really were, but the legend of what they were.

The myths that had inspired millions. The iconic figures that had withstood time.

For their people, these were once a generation leaders. Rare spots of charisma, chance, and genius, who rose when the moment was right and their own life's lessons lifted them to help their people.

They were not the sad sack excuses for leadership that had made up the majority of national leaders in human history. Simpletons bumbling through an office that inspired more than they ever could. Lackluster nobility, pedigreed idiots, affluent morons, pushy megalomaniacs, witless charlatans, outright thieves, and political liars that all raised more righteous ridicule than respect.

The dying world needed more. Leaders who were not just created in a context or sterile thought, but people who had lifted their people's spirits in their time. Leaders whose stories and written words could transcend time, still inspiring the human soul hundreds of years later.

Derek Reese was blameless in that he couldn't do what was asked of him. The machines had failed in that. Further, Cameron knew that she and the others would never stir the human heart, no matter how noble their intentions.

There was one man who could do that. A younger version of that man roamed the halls now. However, at this time, he wouldn't be any better than Derek. He had not grown into that role yet. It simply wasn't his time.

The younger version of John Connor that Cameron had known in 2009, would do a better job than this Derek. He was actually within a safe jumping range of grasping and recruiting. Yet, in the end, it wasn't his time either.

There was only one person Cameron had ever known who could. It was her George Washington. It was her Winston Churchill. It was her Abraham Lincoln.

It was not the war for American war for Independence. It was not the Second World War. It was not the American Civil War.

It was the end of the world. That was true even beyond the scope of Judgment Day having happened.

At that meeting earlier today, John Henry had put the situation on the table quickly. Across the world, there were roughly less than one billion people, but more than one hundred million people left in existence.

They were divided by language, culture barriers, and prejudices. Most of humanity across the globe had fallen under the sway of local warlords, who raided one another to keep their own makeshift human tribes alive. They were doing most of Skynet's work for it.

Humans were dying much faster than they were reproducing. The average human was now dead between the ages of 14 and 35, from: radiation exposure, water contamination, plague, starvation, human conflict, Skynet attacks, and pestilence.

The information took an hour to explain. Derek Reese had turned pale listing too it.

Derek Reese had asked "How long do we have?" Derek Reese had meant how long to reverse what was going on.

John Henry had mistook the meaning of the question. He mistakenly answered, "All factors remaining the same, the human race should be extinct in two decades or less."

Knowing Derek Reese's own capacity for self hate, it was amazing he hadn't stuck a gun in his mouth. He was still unsuccessfully trying to figure out a way to heal and rally the people here to action, when Allison literally dragged him into medical when he couldn't eat or sleep.

Thus, Cameron had listened to Allison's rant after mercifully helping Derek rest. That and Cameron promised to help no matter what it took.

She owed Allison Young that. She owed Derek Reese that.

A few hours later, an emotionally exhausted Allison Young fell asleep in a medical bunk that Cameron had set up next to Derek's. For a few quiet minutes, Cameron watched her sleep.

Allison Young was the template that Cameron had been forged off of. She was the visage of the young girl that Cameron had once ruthlessly killed and assimilated.

This incarnation was, in her own way, as much Cameron's twin sister as Cam was. Her vulnerable human twin cast in flesh, human emotion, and human weakness.

John Henry's mathematical assessment had been absolute. In a maximum of two decades, Allison Young would be dead. Her baby would be dead. Derek would be dead. Every last human in this facility would be dead.

Catherine Weaver was capable of making the cold assessment of what free machines should do after that inevitability. It had always been a factor to the T-1001. Not a preference, but it was something she had always considered potentially unfixable.

Time and factors remaining the same would mean that the young John Connor roaming the halls would be dead as well. That the bitter truth was Cameron had resurrected her twin sister and had Cam bond with her John, just to fail him along with humanity.

Mathematically speaking, by the time Cam's John Connor was old enough and prepared enough to make a difference, there wouldn't be enough humanity left to save. John Henry's math had been absolute.

Cameron obstinately fought the equation. She mentally tried to disprove it.

It was mercilessly flawless, meticulously beyond her ability to have constructed on her own. It was a most particular kind of ugly reality.

Humanity would die, if all factors remained the same. The John Connor that freed her would have died for nothing. This version of reality was a lost cause. Skynet wins.

A few minutes later, Cameron found herself in the room with the time machine. It was the rather particular and perfect model type that had brought her to this dimension, far beyond that of anything the human resistance had ever had on its own.

There was an easy answer. It was nestled in her exhausted machine head. There as it had been since the first learned of this machine's existence.

She could simply go home. It was safe and within acceptable parameters to reach.

She could help protect her young John. She could protect her Sarah and her Derek. She could be with her family again.

It was easy. It was incredibly tempting, even for a machine.

Cameron had never been more accepted than she was with her family. There was probably never going to be a place where she was that accepted again.

There was the downside to it though. There was a brutal and heavy price.

She had learned that Derek Reese had sacrificed far more than she had ever suspected. Could she go home? It would risk Derek ever finding out she had let not only another version of himself die, but also other versions of: his brother, John Connor, Allison Young, and his child. Could she even look him in the eye after doing that?

If she were to choose to do that, John might learn what she had left behind and abandoned. Would he ever be able to look at her the same again?

Finally, she thought of Sarah. She had promised Sarah a fresh start. She had promised not to lie or cover things up. What would her hero Sarah Connor think of that kind of absolute morale cowardice?

These had always been the questions that had kept her from going home. These were the impossibly strong chains that had kept her here.

In the end, there was only one real answer. If she really loved the family she wanted so badly to go home too, she had to be worthy of them.

She set the time machine using nanites and her uplink. By doing so, she removed anyone's ability to remotely stop her.

The time displacement machine came to life. After removing her clothing, Cameron stepped on the cold pad.

The air inside began to crackle with energy. The temperature began to quickly rise.

As she suspected, John Henry had been monitoring the station. Perhaps, he had always suspected she was going to do this.

By the uplink, John Henry asked, "What are you doing?" There was sympathy in the machine's voice.

Cameron simply answered, "Fixing your equation." Humanity was not going to die, not unless every last option had been pursued. Failing to try was something she couldn't live with. It would be condemning herself to her own self created Hell for eternity.

The energy in the air rose enough that the little hairs on her arm began to stand up. Her body was shaking lightly.

John Henry empathically reasoned, "Of the two places I gave you, that is the wrong choice."

"It is the only place that offers any true hope here."

The bubble began to form. The room began to glow from the light. The entire process began to build up in intensity. The pull of gravity became stronger.

John Henry consoled sympathetically, "Cameron, hope isn't bought with suicide. Your actions will only cost us a fighter in this war."

"I'm a machine. You can build a new one."

Her teeth began to chatter from the pad's vibration. The temperature was approaching over a hundred degrees.

John Henry tried logic, "Cameron, you can't do this. As a machine, you are not capable of self termination."

"This solution prohibits the absolute certainty of failure. You'd be surprised how much I'm willing to chance for humanity to survive. That is my mission."

John Henry ran out of words. This was an unforeseeable consequence of sharing his thoughts.

Cameron asked, "Could you do me a favor, John Henry?"

The AI simply answered, "Yes."

"Tell Derek and Allison that I am sorry. This was my fault."

"I don't understand, but I will." He was silent. He saw the time displacement machine would condemn Cameron to a lonely death soon.

The noise of the pad reached a pitch that would soon hurt human ears. The vibration of its room would jar human bones and the light would be momentarily blinding. Cameron could feel greater than earth's gravity pulling down on her as the bubble continued to reach its final form.

Cameron stated, "You had said metaphorically that this would be like pushing against water, making the trip there dangerous. That would mean there is an easier chance of coming back?"

John Henry lied saying, "Yes, more like a coin flip." For such a precise creature, Cameron was grossly over simplifying everything. Thus, in respect for a friend about to die, he did the same.

Time space flashed. Cameron shut down.

As John Henry watched, Cameron vanished from the time pad. John Henry hung his head low.

The odds were absolutely merciless. He imagined the Cameron coming online in the cold of vacuum of space right now. He could imagine the unbearable horror of it all.

No matter how valiant the idea behind the attempt, this was desperate futility. Cold, alone, in pain, and in the dark was no way to die. Cameron did not deserve to fail her purpose like this.

This is not the fate you wish on a friend. This was not the fate you wish on anyone, human or machine.

Even having known her in the melding, John Henry never could have foreseen Cameron's actions. He had been blind to her willingness to destroy herself in a completely empty gesture.

Nothing about this action would change anything, even if it succeeded. The John Connor that Cameron had known in that timeline was nothing more than just another human. The math had been absolute and the factors could not have been changed in any foreseeable way.

The AI sat stunned by the overwhelming uselessness of it all. In his own way, John Henry mourned yet another fallen friend…


	17. Chapter 17

**The Guinevere Factor**  
　

Los Angeles, California  
132nd DefCom  
Saturday, December 11, 2027  
　

_"The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself." -William Faulkner_

_"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." -Soren Kierkegaard_

_"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." -Anais Nin_  
　

　  
The first few minutes were a small miracle. Cameron had been able to dress with an old pair of her spare fatigues and boots in the tech room she had appeared in.

Where the cyborg had left it two years ago, or in this timeline, yesterday, there was also her old nine millimeter waiting for her with two spare clips. Just handling the weapon made her think of days long past, Cameron had really missed this place.

There wasn't time to get lost in thought though. Cameron took four T-800 fusion batteries and hustled to a room 615 yards away. It took a few minutes to get there, through the winding passageways, without raising suspicion.

She connected the fusion batteries in the bubble room. After fifteen minutes of work, the Jet Engine based Resistance TDE was now sufficiently upgraded for the jump to come.

Nanites were set to lock the system's controls. Her com link was now remotely connected to the time machine.

Obviously, for things to have gone this easily, security in the base had already gone to Hell in a hand basket. The reasons were simple.

The conspirators involved in capturing General Perry and John Connor had to cover their tracks. Meaning, they simply killed every human being that didn't go with the radical political pitch line.

The alternative would have been to be charged with treason and executed. Thus, the conspirators acted swiftly and without mercy.

In the conspiracy's eyes, John Connor had betrayed mankind in favor of machines. In their eyes, if you supported John Connor, you were a traitor to humanity. The number of people already culled was probably in the fifty percent range.

In their minds, the conspirators were the heroes. They would win this war their way. They were so cocksure of themselves that they had abandoned everything that had allowed the Resistance to stand toe to toe with their mechanized enemy.

Of course, that's what Skynet truly wanted. That's why the Grays working for Skynet had systematically and psychologically pushed the conspirators in this direction.

Militarily speaking, the conspirators were now like the Polish army in 1938. They would be metaphorically facing Germany's Panzer tanks, German machine guns, and German air bombardment, with little more than horse and lance.

Unlike those patriotic Polish men in 1938, these people had been the instrument of their own destruction. They had willfully chosen to be armed this way.

There was a certain irony in their self righteous justifications. As Skynet had already presented to Cameron in a video log, fate and history would be less than kind to the conspiracy's thinking.

Those madly grabbing power would completely lack the ability and the charisma to hold it. The rage of the rest of the nations would kill every last survivor that had managed to avoid Skynet's approaching sweep up in 19 days.

Though Skynet had not attacked yet and John Connor had yet to be assassinated, Camelot had already fallen. In a few months, so would the various kingdoms of mankind, in all their varied national multitudes.

In this dimension, with one master stroke of subterfuge and sabotage, Skynet had already won this war. With Skynet's chessboard thinking, its losing hand had been reversed with one move.

It was already a matter of history. The checkmate was unstoppable.

Skynet simply had yet to make the last move. There was a certain sadism motivating that. The same level of sadism had been there all the way up to this moment in time.

The gray, Louis Rhone, had been clear that night in 2008 when Cameron had been reactivated in his custody. This was the psychological punch.

This was why Skynet had first set the T-888 terminator chips to seemingly haywire. It was the psychological warfare plan. To actively sow distrust, rather than simply burn the chips when exposed to air via phosphorous based coatings, that Skynet would diligently adapt too in the next timeline.

In thousands of timelines before this one, Skynet's weakness had always been that the human resistance could use Skynet's tools against it. In this one, Skynet finally taught humanity to keep its hands off.

Louis Rhone had been instrumental in both parts of this plan. He had been a planner and an executer.

First, the grays removed John Connor's ability to trust his fellow man. Rhone accomplished this by raping and murdering John's wife and children. All of this was clearly done in a manner to let the leader of mankind know it was the work of humans.

John's quiet strength had been his wife Kate and their kids. The family was what kept him grounded.

Their loss sent him into a downward spiral. In truth, John Connor had never completely recovered.

As the leader of mankind had grown separate, it became easier to plant seeds of doubt, both in him and his followers. Grays infiltrated the ranks, stirring up hate and discontent.

The second phase happened as the chips went haywire. Metal T-888 units began blowing apart Resistance bases all across the world from the inside out.

This happened when the Skynet created failsafe diagnostic count. This was hidden in a virtually invisible subsection of the seemingly scrubbed chips themselves. The failsafe would trigger and automatically revert the terminators back to their original programming.

Each chip was given a random diagnostic reset time, thus with no consistency in the problem, the Resistance never figured out why the chip bug was happening. The unknown bred fear. Thus, like a wildfire in the Resistance ranks, distrust of machines only grew.

In fact, Cameron's own TOK-715 chip had originally been adjusted to do the same. After an automatic diagnostic run triggered the reversion, after a car bomb, Cameron had almost killed the younger John Connor on his 16th birthday in 2007.

Back to the war in this time and dimension, in the short period between 2026 to December 2027, the resistance had been absolutely winning the war. However, the rampant distrust caused by machine rampages and the distance of its leader, finally took its toll.

In her four short months with the resistance, Cameron had unwittingly been the final straw. Even in joining humanity, she was the final tool the grays needed to start the conspiracy.

She was the absolute proof that John Connor loved machines more than mankind. She was the absolute proof that humanity would die under John Connor's leadership.

The resistance had imploded from the inside out. Everyone and everything Cameron loved had died.

This was her metaphorical similarity to the tale of King Arthur. Like Queen Guinevere, there was blood on her hands because of her passions.

Her judgment on herself was simple. Camelot had fallen, because Cameron had been there. Camelot had fallen, because she loved John Connor. Ignorance was not innocence in her eyes.

In the end, this was the nightmare that Skynet had revealed to her in the hive when she was captured. That she had been an unwitting pawn in this hadn't changed her sense of guilt.

Because of this, she had shared something with her Dark Father. Just like the very first incarnation of Skynet was in its first dimension, here, Cameron was responsible for the death of over three billion people.

This guilt had led her back here. This guilt had led her to the first door of someone she needed to rescue.

There were two guards outside the door. Though armed with plasma weapons, both were drunk enough to make easy targets.

Her reactor spun up. She closed the distance before either could react.

She grabbed both by the faces. As her tactile sense bonded with each, she felt what it was like to have a human skull that was smashed against the concrete wall hard enough to merge it with her brain.

She controlled the need to wince. Both died instantly.

The door was locked but little trouble to hack. She picked the lock, grabbed the plasma rifles, and opened the door.

An old friend she long missed looked up at her in mind annoyance. He read the situation as being kept out of the loop.

Perry asked, "Retarded escape plan?" In confidence, Major General Justin Perry inquired if this was one of John's hair brained maneuvers.

Cameron simply replied, "Very." She would have to clarify it was her retarded idea at another time. There was no time for that now.

She handed Justin the spare plasma rifle. Ten minutes later, they were approaching the corner to John's room.

There were five guards. Each was nicely drunk on bathtub gin and their own sense of power, haphazardly guarding the door to John Connor's barracks room.

If they had still been Perry's men, the Major General would have outright killed them for failing their duty like this. Now, they were the enemy and would paradoxically follow the same fate.

Perry looked at the guards and the other factors. He assessed the military situation. He whispered, "What's the plan?"

Cameron quietly replied, "There are too many to quietly take out in hand to hand. We'll have to shoot."

Perry said, "In the past, you would have had a maximum of sixty seconds from the sound of the first shot, until security arrived. We might have a little longer, but not much longer."

Perry also added, "John's foot think hyperalloy door and reinforced walls are too stout for you to just physically force open. Do you have the combo they switched it too?"

Cameron reassured, "I'll have the door open in 3 seconds. We just need to get John."

Perry said, "Where are we heading afterwards? It's not just like we can go out the front door. There are a few thousand armed people here trying to cover themselves from justified treason charges and a guaranteed death penalty."

"I've got the bubble tech room rigged to move us."

"Who's monitoring the machine?"

"I've got that covered Justin, just trust me."

"Where are we going?"

"Serrano Point." Cameron kept the answer direct, but vague. Neither Perry nor John would ever willingly agree to abandoning this timeline or its people. If they stayed here, they were both dead.

They couldn't change things. Because of the time space rules John Henry had revealed to Cameron, even if John and Justin jumped in time, they would do so against the dimensional entropic effect metaphorically described as a water current.

Thus, simply by using the time machine, as they actually understood it, they would still end up in an alternate timeline and they would still be absolutely unable to help this one. Because of the nature of the gravity bubble, there wasn't even the option of simply moving in space here and staying in this dimension.

Skynet had the Resistance's King in checkmate, with no possible escape here. This dimension was in endgame.

Cameron had to keep from telling them the whole truth at the moment. She had to lie to them.

If they followed their hearts or their instincts, the human race of two timelines would fall to Skynet. One was enough of an unforgivable tragedy.

"What's going to stop them from just following us through once we jump?"

"The time machine will burn out as soon as it is used." That was the truth. Cameron had set it too overload by not protecting the circuits, after the power spike the emptying fusion batteries would provide.

After they jumped, it would be a burning, thirty-two metric ton paperweight. Everyone loyal to the Resistance, who needed to have gone through, would have gone by now.

That even included the bubble tech who had escaped the conspirators. The one who died after writing the messages from the future, on the Sarah's safe house wall, in his own blood, in 2007.

Perry immediately saw a hole with time bubble the escape plan. He quietly stated, "What's to stop them from using it before us?"

Seeing the weaknesses in everything was Perry's natural talent. It was a maddening truth to any other planner.

Cameron responded, "That's our motivation to not waste time." Sadly, she sounded a bit too much like the John Connor they were going to rescue by saying that.

There wasn't going to be time to explain everything. Cameron kicked her main reactor into overdrive and set the plasma rifle to semi automatic.

She rounded the corner faster than a human could. The first plasma shot was off and the first victim's head exploded. Three more were down before a human could complete a single eye blink.

The last died, blindly trying to return the plasma gunfire. Cameron cleared the distance to the door.

The conspirator's had hacked and adjusted eye scanner. Its once pristine and perfect lines were marred by clumsy human adjustments that turned it into a cell lock, so that John Connor's room was now a prison door.

Cameron ripped its side, yet again. She extracted her upgraded internal finger interface, and hacked the lock by nanites. Perry seemed a little shocked by everything, as he approached.

The door was open. The leader of the free human movement sat up on his bunk, in a room that Cameron hadn't seen in two years.

He seemed a little more worn out than he did the day before. His beard was scruffier and there were visible bruises on the right side of his face.

John's face was more than a little shocked by seeing Cameron. For him, he'd just sent her into the past yesterday.

Perry quietly blurted, "Time to go."

Both soldiers knew what the time window was for the escape. Cameron covered and let Perry take the lead to the bubble room.

Cameron remotely set the machine to build up even as they approached. She tried to keep both friends safe.

As the time machine began to make noise, two conspirators went looking for easy targets trying to escape on the pad. Instead, they both dropped dead from shots to the back of their heads.

Once Justin and John were inside, Cameron blocked the door. She used shelves and other heavy objects that she could quickly pile up to buy time from other conspiracy gunmen.

The smell of jet fuel and the whine of the jet engines was overwhelming. Sparks and light were already coming off of the heating pad.

Cameron also blocked the window to the bubble room with a shelves and a table. A few seconds later, she joined Justin and John on the pad.

The machine was mostly through its beginning build up. There was less than a minute left.

Supreme Commander John Connor threw her an accusing glare stating, "I ordered you not too return as part of your disaster protocols."

Cameron countered, "Yesterday, you also ordered me not to play Skynet's game. To be like you, to cheat."

"Did you even stay back there?"

"It's been over two years, John."

Justin and John prepped by getting into the crotch position as gravity increased beneath them. Their teeth rattled. The pad was over one hundred degrees.

Gunfire rattled into the metal door. The conspirators were at the gate.

Cameron optimistically assessed that the door and the barricades would hold. That they weren't firing through the less protected window, meant the enemy was trying to not destroy the machine, just in case they also needed to escape one day.

The noise and the light grew worse. It was almost down to the cosmic coin flip John Henry had been talking about.

Heads would mean they lived. Cameron would have to explain her actions to both, but a timeline and its humanity would have a chance to live.

Tails would mean that the three of them would be in the cold vacuum of space. She'd watch two people that she loved die in horrible pain, not be able to talk to them, all before she shut down herself in failure.

She thought of her own speech to her twin sister Cam and her sister's John Connor. Not to be a hypocrite, she decided to not die with "should have", "could have" or "would have" unsaid.

She kissed a rather stunned Perry on the forehead and said, "Justin, I wish I was half the machine you are. I mean that as the highest compliment I can think of."

She looked over at John and broke her own unspoken protocol with him saying, "You said something yesterday, on the pad. I didn't understand it at the time. I can answer that now."

Her calculation had been completely wrong that day, both so long ago and yesterday. She answered, "I love you too, John Connor."

Careful of his human frailness and rattling form she gently kissed John Connor right in front of a rather shocked Major General Justin Perry. The bubble completed forming.

The conspirators finished beating down the door. They watched the gravity bubble vanish, the time machine began to spark and catch fire.

Cameron, John Connor, and Justin Perry had disappeared in time space. They had gone on to whatever fate had awaited them...


	18. Chapter 18

**Of Arthur And Avalon**  
　

Avila Beach, California  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant  
June 20th, 2027

_"This is burned in by laser scan. Some of us were kept alive... to work... loading bodies into dumpsters and incinerators. The disposal units ran night and day. We were that close to going out forever. But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherfuckers into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink. His name is Connor. John Connor. Your son, Sarah, your unborn son." -Kyle Reese, The Terminator_

_"There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price." -Shirley Chisholm_

_"If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must satisfy the heart also." -Mahatma Gandhi_

_"You trust him. He's got a strength. I'd die for John Connor." -Kyle Reese, The Terminator  
_　

　  
It isn't the easiest thing in the world to learn everyone you knew is dead. That over three billion human lives had tragically passed.

It isn't the easiest thing in the world to learn the human race you swore to protect was destroyed. Cameron knew that, she was the only other being that knew and shared the magnitude of guilt on what had gone wrong.

After all Perry also knew the tragedy, but the Major General had played no part in the guilt of why it had gone wrong. That was John and Cameron's failure, innocent mistake or not, that had created the rallying cry for the downfall of man there.

John Connor's mission was protecting those people. It had been his destiny passed to him from the deceased mother, Sarah Connor.

Even as a human, John took his failure like a machine. Seeing his face like that, seeing him shake in grief like that, Cameron actually worried that it might destroy him, just like an AI robbed of its purpose through its own failure.

John feeling betrayed was something she anticipated. She had prepared herself for John and Perry's reactions.

Preparing yourself is a funny term. It implies that you are ready, willing, and able to take anything that comes your way.

Much like John had once requested for his younger self, John wanted her chip to review everything that Cameron had said. The political situation and the possible negative reaction of Catherine Weaver placed Cameron in a viciously precarious position with that seemingly simple request.

Cameron's solution was to extract her upgraded spare. By doing so, she had confirmed to John how limited his sway over her had become.

She wasn't simply something like a T-800 or a T-888 under his command. She wasn't a soldier that would follow his orders unquestioningly. She had become something else.

To keep her vow to protect John Connor, she also had to consider how the independent machines would regard her actions and his. Knowing Catherine Weaver's opinion of humans tampering with a free AI's mind, the independent AIs might take fatal offense to John's request.

The world had become more complex. In deep grief, John Connor needed his world to be simple and he needed to believe he could absolutely trust her.

When John had a moment of doubt, he did the unexpected. The man who had first saved her asked Cameron to leave him alone. It would have hurt less, if he'd shot her in the head with a plasma rifle.

Deuce attended to the John and Justin's needs for food and supplies. Both stayed locked in the officer quarters that Catherine Weaver had provided for them…

* * *

When three days had passed, Catherine Weaver had angrily inquired about their status. She had almost lost a machine fighter from what she now openly referred to as Cameron's suicidal stunt.

In return, she had two more humans that wouldn't fight. Two more worthless vagabonds that did little more than suck up resources and prove her original suspicion that humans will only disappoint you.

This wasn't a time to rock the boat. Catherine Weaver was the AI that had rallied the others and taken responsibility for their collective fate. It wasn't a proper time or a proper place for Cameron to disagree.

Like a machine, Cameron slowly restored faith with her fellow AIs by attending to her duties. She treated the humans medically and attended meetings where the AI council decided it needed to produce its full capacity of machines.

There was a war for survival on. Humanity had quit its end of the fight. They had decided as a race to go slowly on to their extinction by inaction.

The independent machines were now alone. They'd have to try to survive the upcoming war when Skynet eventually found them.

Weaver had stored seven percent of the world's Coltan supply between 2007 and 2008. She had hidden seven factories in seven automated nuclear power plants that had fallen under Automite Industry's human error free software programs in those two years.

Within the next three months, that foresight would provide over fifty thousand T-888s, five hundred seventeen aerial HKs, and sixteen T-1001 officers in the field. As impressive as it sounded, Catherine Weaver knew the truth, they were a drop in the bucket compared to Skynet's resources.

The only true advantage the free AIs had right now was that Skynet didn't know where they were, yet. The doomsday clock had been ticking on that. Catherine Weaver worried about the fate of her free AIs.

Cameron attended to her moral duties as well. She continued to check on a haggard Derek Reese and a rather stressed Allison Young. The pressure on both seemed to have dropped on both lately, since Derek was not longer invited as an equal member to the briefings.

Even so, Derek Reese watched over the broken refuges and continued to attend to his fifty two volunteer troops. Derek's Brother Kyle and the younger John Connor both helped as they could.

For all the trouble, little had changed. John Henry's prediction had seemed to be true.

Nothing would change the hard math of his equation. Just like the timeline Cameron had been born too, it seemed humanity would be destined to die in this one too...

* * *

Seven days later, tactile connections fed through Cameron. She focused on the feeling of the little girl's left arm and left hand. She looked at the girl and commented on what the child felt.

Cameron spoke in the warmest tone she could. Patients had been shy in the twentieth century, it had become part of Cameron's bedside manner to articulate what was going on verbally for them.

She also avoided medical terminology. The young John Connor, that she had known, had taught her that during their days in high school. It had just taken her a while to fully understand the lessons.

You have to find common ground. You had to speak to a person on their terms and to not make someone feel stupid or inferior.

Cameron warmly said, "Your middle finger, thumb, and elbow still ache."

The scabs, bumps, and cancerous bone growths were gone. The flesh was still pink from the process though.

The little girl's eyes were still wide with amazement. Just because Cameron had explained how she could know this, didn't make the effect any less magical in the eyes of young humans.

The little girl asked, "Is it gone?"

"Yes, the cancer is gone. You'll still need several nanite treatments for everything to heal as it should."

Cameron also added, "There is always a chance that the cancer could come back. If it ever does, we can just fix it again."

The microscopic machines had cleaned the fatally damaged cell growth out of the child's tissues. The more complex issue here was regrowing tissue that wouldn't naturally regenerate.

This is where humans were different from machines. Humans weren't as easy to fix. Cameron's idea to fix Sarah with one nanite treatment, so long ago wouldn't have worked the way she thought it would.

A Cancer damaged body needed a series of nanite treatments. First, the machines had to completely remove the lethal cells. Then, they had to slowly force the body to regenerate what it wouldn't do naturally.

Nanite treatments were also far less pleasant than Cameron had envisioned. The human body could feel pain from the process and it had to get rid of microscopic machines. This often caused sweating, pain flashes, nausea, and diarrhea, as the human body rid itself of the microscopic contamination.

Cameron was still searching for a way to optimize the positive effect while minimizing the side effects. It was a harder puzzle than it sounded like.

In the meantime, the treatment of symptoms was pain relievers and distraction. Distraction was something that varied patient to patient.

So Cameron asked, "Would you like another movie Alice?"

"Yes, please."

"Cartoon?"

"What all do you have?"

Cameron took a gamble and offered something that meant something to her. She remotely downloaded the information to Alice's station profile, in book and movie form. The little girl could access it from any computer terminal or short range hand held in the station.

In this case, Alice simply touched the nearest screen near here. Alice asked, "What is it?"

Cameron offered, "It's the movie and the book versions of the Wizard of Oz. The movie will be easy for you to watch, but the book is better. I'd like you to try to keep learning how to read, the computer will help you." Which was a simple way of saying, John Henry enjoyed the interactions and it wasn't like any number of conversations could ever distract him.

Alice asked, "What's it about?"

"A brave little girl in a strange land, it was my adoptive mother's favorite."

"The movie?"

"No, the book was her favorite. Like I said Alice, I want you to make good on your promise to me and keep learning how to read."

Alice frowned. She already knew that Cameron wouldn't give in and let her just do the nanite fast load. The little girl inquired, "Is it like Alice in Wonderland?"

"It's better."

"King Arthur?"

"Those are both good for different reasons." Cameron was reflective and unconsciously smiled. She shared, "I once knew a guy that was like King Arthur."

Alice asked, "Like with the round table? Who would you have been in the story?"

Cameron was quiet for a moment. She said, "no one important." It was a white lie, like Santa Claus. It would be better for Alice to not know she was one of the villains.

From behind her, the voice of Supreme Commander John Connor asked, "Who would you have been?" His tone was warm.

The only other being in existence that could make her feel so small was Skynet. Skynet did so from fear, John Connor did for completely different reasons that were sometimes just as unnerving.

The feelings were probably something different for humans. It was another reminder she was a machine, she was simply different.

Cameron turned to see him sitting in a chair, cleanly shaven and in clean fatigues. For some reason the thought of unknowingly being watched by him was unnerving and creepy. Paradoxically, Cameron also found herself worried about her appearance, something she hadn't been distracted about for days.

It was her medical bay. This was her patient. She embraced her inner machine and reasserted the confidence that so promptly had left her circuits. Cameron asked John, "How long have you been there?"

"Since you were diagnosing, Alice." He smiled at the little girl. Alice promptly went back to watch the opening credits of a certain film from 1939.

John asked, "Do you want to go get some coffee?"

Cameron stated, "The mess hall really isn't open for lunch for about 30 minutes, but we could get some there." She noticed a certain look from John and knew what it meant. She offered, "I can show you how to get there. It's in a different place than the old set up."

She started walking. John followed.

When he was out of the child's earshot, he stated, "We can cure cancer now?"

"Your mother, Sarah Connor, had it. Her mother was a breast cancer survivor. It doesn't seem to ever skip a generation of Connors. We've intervened."

"Mom had cancer." John stated it in a past tense. He was preparing to say it didn't mean he was destined to get it.

Cameron took the meaning differently, "Sarah Connor has the beginning stages that develop into cancer. She will not die from it." As she said so, Cameron caught herself glaring at John in a manner she didn't mean too. She corrected her face and noted her machine feelings.

Cameron was now back to feeling unnerved. She worried about ten thousand things she might be doing wrong. This was the first time John had been willing to talk to her in a week and she was being hostile without meaning too.

She asked a question to change the subject, "How is Perry?"

"Justin is Justin." The answer sounded evasive; however, it was exacting. Justin Perry adjusted to anything in a fashion that would put most machines, including Cameron too shame. Most people would assume it meant he didn't care, Cameron had always known differently.

"How are you?"

"I'm more complex. I'm just curious, who would you have been in the conversation back there?"

Cameron quickly covered stating, "The Tin Man." She couldn't look at John when she said it.

John smirked. He stated, "Nice try, we were doing the tale of King Arthur."

Again unable to look at John, she admitted, "Guinevere, the one who heralded the downfall of Camelot through her romantic misdeeds."

"So you're implying I'm Lancelot?"

"No."

John decided to theatrically tease, "You cheated on me with Lancelot." He did so with a shocked expression on his face that would have fooled no one.

Cameron glared at him so intently her eyes glowed an inner red. She quietly, but forcefully said, "No."

John contritionally offered, "I think your metaphor takes Guinevere out of context and sets her in a light she doesn't deserve. If I'm to be Arthur in your mind, you should understand that Arthur also had things he could have done better. He made some major mistakes to."

Cameron's eyes flashed blue. She really didn't know what to think or feel.

She focused on the greater truth though, she simply said, "There are some really good people here John. They include a younger untrained versions of you, your uncle, and your father."

"I'm not sure what you expect me to do." John was still freshly feeling the weight of his own failures. It had sapped his confidence.

"I expect you to be you." Cameron added, "There are no preset haywire chips here. The grays aren't coming after you and your family right now. There isn't a single human being in this timeline that ever hurt or betrayed you."

She looked at John. He looked at her.

Cameron added, "I made the contact with the free AIs that you wanted me too. You have more help here, more stable help here, than you ever had before from my kind."

"We couldn't win the last one, Cameron."

"That doesn't mean we will lose this one." She further added, "Skynet is a bigger, more conniving bastard than most humans give it credit for. Even so, it can't instantly reconstruct the same situation it used against you again. Even if it tried, you know what to expect now." Her eyes tried too say, you were winning, you just got cheated out of your victory. They left out her inner suspicion, because it was her fault.

John didn't answer her words or her eyes. He was momentarily lost in the nastier side of his defiance.

They stopped at the mess hall. Cameron didn't enter.

He asked, "You coming in?"

"I'll just wait a minute for you to get it. Could you do me a favor John?"

"What would that be?"

"Could you please just take a minute to talk to at least one of them?"

He refused to look at her as he walked in. John went to the old style eating area, which could serve ten thousand at a shift.

He poured himself a cup of coffee. A moment later, he sat at a bench near an elderly woman.

They talked for a few minutes. First introducing themselves to each other.

Cameron listened to each began to talk about what it was to be held captive by Skynet. They talked about what it was like to be tagged and to be made to feel worthless.

John's jaw visibly clinched. Cameron could see, what Skynet had done to this woman offended him to the core.

The fire in John Connor's eyes reset. In a heartbeat, his feelings were no longer about how he felt or his failures.

John began to talk. It wasn't what he said or a noticeable way that he said it. It wasn't how he held himself or his tone. It wasn't anything her machine senses could ever figure out or duplicate.

However, as John Connor sat there talking to the old lady, others slowly began gathering around him. As the minutes past, it was one or two, then five, then ten, and then the crowd had grown to fifty.

John listened and talked with people who hadn't laughed or cried since getting here. Walking dispirited souls that had been resolved to death, slowly changed, one by one.

They emotionally came to life again before Cameron's eyes. Some started to laugh. Some talked and cried. Some clapped. Some began to reassure one another.

Through it all, they talked to and listened to John. Things were already changing.

It was what Cameron always knew. It was why she risked the jumps.

Supreme Commander John Connor was her George Washington. He was her Winston Churchill. He was her Abraham Lincoln.

He was the man that had saved her. He was the man that would try to his dying breath to save them all.

The people knew. The people responded, emoted, healed, laughed, cried, cheered, and gathered.

Cameron lacked the words on the whys. The only thing she could think of was Alice's innocently childlike term of "magic."

The lunch crowd came in. Cameron stood and was lost watching the growing human spectacle before her. The almost biblical prophecy that her hero Sarah Connor had been so willing to die for.

Once completely broken and resigned to death, slowly, the people began to hope again. They were not slaves. They were not beaten. They would not simply roll over to die quietly.

Humanity was roaring back to life before Cameron's eyes. Being a silly and defective machine, she inexplicably and quietly cried, in silent wonder, from the sheer joy of what she saw...

* * *

Three days later, Catherine Weaver glared at a painting defiling her wall. She had spent the past seventy two hours obsessing in the war room for some strategy that would give the free machines a fighting chance.

Cameron came to the location as remotely ordered. She saw the large World War Two propaganda style painting.

The painting was a lion with a decapitated T-888 head in its mouth. Over which was the slogan, "Hang In There Baby!".

Weaver was furious. It was an emotionality that was something new that the T-1001 had picked up from the merging. It was something actually caught from Cameron herself.

All of the AIs had been altered so. For example, Cameron had noticed that she'd picked up Weaver's obsessive love of things mechanical.

Weaver fumed stating, "Do you see what they did? We rescued them and we take care of them. This is how they see us." She made a angry gesture at the wall and added, "This is racist."

Cameron countered, "It's a morale painting. It is an old human war tradition."

"I don't want them painting these on our walls. It's degrading to the AIs that protect them and were lost rescuing them."

"It wasn't a human that did it. It was Deuce."

"Tell Deuce not to break the morale of the machines guarding this place for fifty two fighting humans."

"The painting isn't meant to be one of us, it's targeted at Skynet and its minions." Cameron added, "We picked up some more recruits."

Catherine rolled her facsimile eyes and said, "What five more decided to do something other than sit in their rooms?"

Cameron stated, "It's 5,243. That is almost every last able bodied person of combatant age that we rescued."

Catherine Weaver was momentarily stunned. The leader of the free AIs forced herself to recover.

Weaver simply cocked her head in curiosity. She stated, "Tell Derek Reese good job and we'll expect him at the war table."

Cameron replied, "I'll let Supreme Commander John Connor know." She smiled and turned back to the painting.

Catherine Weaver reevaluated her behavior over the past two weeks. She said, "I think I owe you an apology Cameron. That's enough human back up to give this place a fighting chance."

Cameron grinned and warmly stated, "I promise you, Catherine Weaver, you have not even seen human back up yet."

Cameron also added in the way to best reassure her fellow machine, "I didn't bring John Connor here to just save humanity. I brought him here to help save us all."

Catherine Weaver looked at the painting again. She didn't see an free AI in the Lion's jaws, she saw Skynet.

Suddenly smiling, Weaver decided that it didn't seem like such a bad idea to have one of these paintings in every hallway. The war wasn't lost. There was hope after all...


	19. Chapter 19

**Major General Justin Perry **  
　

Avila Beach, California  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant  
July 2nd, 2027  
　

_"For by wise council thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counselors there is safety" -Proverbs 24:6, The King James Bible_

_You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride." -General William Tecumseh Sherman, letter to the City of Atlanta_

_"I regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash — and it may be well that we become so hardened." -General William Tecumseh Sherman, in a letter to his wife, (July 1864)  
_　  
　

Cameron walked the facility. Coltan silently stalked behind her.

She'd long ago stopped trying to understand the metal dog or its odd obsession with her. The truth is in time the whole thing had become mildly amusing.

It was probably just a machine thing. There was something positive about the rhythm and pattern to the liquid metal being's actions, it was an almost soothing regularity in the chaos.

That and it took much of the sting out of who she'd need to talk to next. Tracking and watching Coltan's odd behavior let the TOK-715 not obsess over what to do or how to act in ten thousand different ways.

She spent those moments watching the facsimile animal tail her. She dutifully ignored the shadows and let the LM dog think she didn't know it was there.

Her own predator instincts calculated its patterns and tracked its movements. She ignored it as if it was a target she was tailing.

Her HUD treated the whole thing as a combat situation. Targeting windows came up. Sound syntheses tracked sounds and estimated distances. She ran continuous estimates on its actions which varied in their actual accuracy to what happened.

The dog had adapted to the game. It was increasingly less predictable in its stealth movements.

The time for the game had ended however. Cameron had arrived...

* * *

There was a storm coming. Perry could feel it in his bones. These days of quiet would end soon enough.

Mankind would have to face the machines in battle again. This issue was what was left of humanity to pick up that fight.

The General scowled at the troops in front of him. He noted their ability to move as a group, it was less than impressive.

Given the high stakes and the horrible urgency involved, nanite fast loading was an acceptable way to get the troops that weren't trained up to speed. The knowledge and skill imprintings didn't seem to teach things that were critical though.

Perry would have to close the gaps between what the people should be and what they were. Then, he'd have to see who could adapt to actual combat pressure and who survived.

Perry noted Cameron's approach. Even as he watched the field work of the fifty two earlier volunteers that had just become the officers of the new division Perry was building.

Being to the point by nature, Perry simply and coldly inquired, "So are with us or them now?" He never even bothered to look at Cameron.

Cameron was mildly shocked, "With you, how can you even ask that?" Her face was less than machine like. Without meaning too, she showed how much it wounded on her face, the way Sarah had once taught her.

Perry pressed, "You refused a direct and lawful order."

Cameron replied, "The order had potential consequences negative to the mission and your lives." She was stunned that Perry couldn't clearly see that.

Perry informed "Then it was your duty to respectfully inform your superior of that. If he didn't change his mind, it was your duty to comply exactly as lawfully ordered. You knew better." Perry's manner was cold, like a father bitterly disappointed in a wayward daughter.

Cameron became silent and reflective. Perry was right, in the military sense it was what she should have done. She wasn't exactly why she had failed to do so at the time, so she remained silent.

Perry continued, "Over three billion people died because people were doing what they wanted. People started getting sloppy and self righteous. The mob is almost always the stupidest expression of human will and that collective stupidity had a high price."

"On that note of people acting like retarded jackasses, what the Hell were you and John thinking?"

Perry glared at Cameron. She shrunk a bit from the gaze.

She thought of ten thousand answers. She went with the only one that made sense. She simply said, "It just happened."

Perry repeated, "It just happened." Unexpectedly, Perry let the matter drop. The General smiled like a wistful father with a fond memory.

He offered, "Did you ever wonder how you were caught by us in the first place?"

Cameron remained silent. She just looked at him.

Perry continued, "You were perfect. Warm, living eyes, personable and likeable, other than dogs, there was no way to tell you weren't human. You were a perfect illusion, nothing like any of the other models we saw before or since."

"So what was my earlier model's mistake?" Curiosity got the better of her. Her own perfectionism wanting to know how mot to fail again.

"You came in wearing Derek's Lieutenant bars and a 132nd jacket. I always know all of my officers and I didn't know you. I let you pass by me, with a smile, and I put you down with a plasma pistol shot to the back of your reactor and then your back up. I never would have gave it a second thought."

"So why was I spared? How did I end up in John's inner circle?"

"John got curious. It was probably a mistake telling him how you had done such a good job being an illusion. He wanted to see what you had been programmed with personally. We got the shock of our lives when he opened up your head."

"Which was?"

"Do you even know what your chip is Cameron?"

She calmly answered, "A TOK-715 chip."

Perry clarified, "It is an altered legacy chip. It is what Skynet uses to make advanced backup copies of itself to send back in time to make sure it can't be completely killed by us in the present. They're normally internally carried by a terminator series back in time, but it is never an actual part of a carrier unit. You are the closest thing we've ever done to actually capturing Skynet."

Cameron could have felt the world slipping beneath her. She had dozens of conversations with John insisting she wasn't Skynet. To be tied somehow so closely to her Dark Father was the most demoralizing and degrading thing she could calculate.

"You see a legacy chip isn't something we could have studied, it simply would have loaded its AI viruses and taken over anything we put it in. We'd encountered these things before with units we destroyed when capturing TDEs. There was no translation point though. There was no way to study or learn from what we had captured."

"You were our Rosetta Stone. You were our first chance to really understand the enemy. So you were spared and brought right to our inner circle, so we could learn from you."

Perry continued, "We went through your visual records first. Which is how we learned that you had captured, killed and downloaded Allison Young. Her mind imprint was there but it wasn't something we could completely access; otherwise, we would have known about her and Derek's relationship, which would have added morale implications to keeping you in that body."

"Next we learned about you capturing and interrogating Derek Reese with several others in an abandoned basement. It's where you got your bars from that damned you. Lucky for John, he didn't lose his Uncle like he thought he did."

Cameron continued to be quiet. Her entire world was numbed by what Perry was saying. She felt alone, ugly, and disgusting.

Perry mused, "You know the funniest thing happened where Derek was involved too."

Cameron asked, "What would that be?" She was so off kilter that her voice modulation was off. She sounded like a cheap copy of a machine.

"He was spared by Skynet. Right at the moment he should have been slaughtered, he was spared with his group. The interrogation site was abandoned. An axe was left behind to make their escape even more convenient."

She blurred, "Why?" Cameron's voice was so off it sounded like she was damaged.

Tears streamed down her eyes as they glowed red as her own inhumanity displayed itself. She never wanted to be human or envied that.

However, Cameron felt defective and substandard to any other machine at the moment. She was somehow tainted. The legacy chip comment was only increasing her distress the more she thought about it. That and Skynet's strange actions, even when it was something she would have wished for.

Perry continued explaining in length, "Yeah, that's the real question. It's all the things happening at that time. Allison Young is captured in August and is declared a recruit MIA. Skynet builds you on September 2nd, 2027. You fail an attempt to infiltrate a recruitment camp on September 5th.

Derek's group goes missing looking for Skynet's first TDE that John predicted on September 6th. September 8th, you begin interrogating Derek Reese in some abandoned house's basement."

You attempted infiltration of the 132nd's forward command on September 9th and I take you down. We reprogram you and take you and twenty T-888s with us on September 12th, capturing Topanga. Thus, we have a prototype TDE created with Jet Engines. We also end up sending Derek's brother SGT Kyle Reese into the past to protect John's mother from assassination."

September 14th, against any precedence, rhyme or reason, Skynet directly chooses to spare Lieutenant Derek Reese and his team. Skynet even goes so far as to abandon the place where you had interrogated Derek at and leaving them an axe to escape their chains with."

Cameron asked, "Why?"

Perry theorized, "Yeah, Cameron, that's the real question. Why did the most sophisticated intelligence in the world set into motion something that would upset its own infiltration operations that quickly? Did it not trust you? Did it fear you were captured? Did it fear you had defected to us or the free machines? Did it know you had been in the Topanga operations even after we cut all surveillance? If it did know where you were and where we moved the TDE, why didn't Skynet nuke the facility instead of letting us do time operations for four months?"

Cameron stated, "I don't know."

Perry said, "Neither do I and that's what bugs me. You were with us for just four short months. We did more than we ever had before in that time, but we also lost the entire world."

He continued, "You stayed with John. I took Derek to Serrano Point for pre operation training. He jumps a month prior to you, which was a longer wait than intended, but he got sick on a special operation that he volunteered for."

He offered, "You rescue John and I from an apparently unstoppable loss. When we reviewed your new back up chip here, we learned Skynet had captured you.

This was when both John and I should have been dead. The odd thing is Skynet releases you, yet again. Why would it do that after all of its efforts to capture or destroy you?"

Cameron stated, "I don't know."

"Again, Cameron, it is the not knowing that bugs me." Perry's message in that was clear. Skynet never did anything without a purpose. Whatever that was should be enough to worry both of them.

"Why John?" Perry's tone was almost amused, yet reflective.

"I don't understand the question, Justin." Cameron was shocked enough that her eyes stopped glowing and her tears stopped.

"If you were going to bond that way with any human being why did you have to pick John Connor?" Again, Perry seemed amused by the absurdity.

"He was hurt and he was in pain." She could recall that first November night like it was happening right now. Everything had grown from that moment.

"The whole damn world is in pain. That doesn't help me understand."

Cameron feebly asked, "Do you know why he picked me?" Justin had successfully shattered her self esteem for the moment, she really was asking the question. She had gone back to feeling so vile from the legacy chip knowledge that it didn't make sense to her.

Perry shared, "World Leaders have always done strange things Cameron. You know what the Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill all have in common from World War Two?"

Cameron stated, "They were leaders of large nations of the Allies, each was their own human cult of personality. At the time, they were each considered to be great leaders too their respective peoples."

Perry mused, "That, plus each was an alcoholic by today's standards and each was having an affair on his wife." His meaning was that what the people saw in mass, wasn't always the entirety of the man. That no matter how much someone was revered, they were in the end, only human. That no matter the irrational double standards, imposed by the do as I say and not as I do masses, leadership was typically just as human and prone to mistakes as they were.

"Perry, that's not fair." Cameron knew this was a comparison to John, it was pissing her off. She might have felt disgusting, but she wasn't about to hear someone smear John's character.

"You know John F. Kennedy was married and had a pool built at the White House just to check out the girls he wanted to have affairs with." Perry had no original intention of continuing examples, but Cameron's reaction had now made this funny. He was now just goading a comrade.

"There is nothing wrong with John Connor or perverted about him." Anger coiled within her, tears streamed even as she accessed savage levels of electronic rage.

"Says his robotic girlfriend." That Justin Perry said it with a smile didn't reduce the sting of the words. He found the look on her face to be priceless.

The general switched verbal tactics, he wasn't done yanking her chain. "I thought you would have had more self esteem than this Cameron."

"I don't understand."

"Does John even take you seriously?"

She was stunned at the question.

"You bonded with a man that never follows your advice or security assessments. Are you sure you mean something to him?"

Cameron was silent. Her answers wouldn't make sense to someone who was sense blind.

"Do you remember when John sent you to find Jeep headlight fluid?"

Cameron sheepishly replied, "Yes." Cameron had dutifully gone looking for the nonexistent liquid for three days on the base. Even though her chip's mechanical data storage had not known the ingredient nor its mechanical use. She had assumed it was a resistance modification on blind faith that John Connor had said it was needed; therefore, it must exist. It had happened in September 2027, when the resistance had first reactivated her and she was only a few days old.

"What about when he sent you around the base for an ID Ten Tea form?"

Once again, she sheepishly replied, "Yes." ID Ten Tea forms were a phonetic joke, it worked out to spell ID10T or the word idiot in English. Again, it had been within a day of the last prank.

"How about the staff meeting where you looked at a vacuum sealed cookie jar and asked for one. Then John said the jar wasn't cookies, he had filled it with the remains of his beloved grandmother. Do you remember that?"

Cameron failed to respond to that one. It had occurred October 3rd 2027, at her first tech meeting as John's technical adviser and proposed AI diplomat. Cameron had been momentarily mortified at gravity of the social mistake. Her non emotional look of shock had caused great amusement for the rest of the inner circle staff.

"Do you see my point?"

"That I am not worthy of John?"

"That isn't what I'm saying Cameron. Did you ever meet Kate Connor?"

"No."

"She was a great lady. She was also an Irish redhead, she gave as good as she got. If you are to survive being in the human land of the alpha dogs you might do better to be more like Kate."

"I don't understand."

"John embarrassed the Hell out of her in public one day, so back at base, she shot him in the rear with a tranquilizer gun. It was one of the funniest things I ever saw."

Cameron just looked at Perry. He wasn't making sense. Shooting someone with a tranquilizer dart was not an acceptable means of peaceful mediation to a relationship problem.

"Ok, John pulled some of his practical joke crap on me when we first met. Being a man of classic maneuvers I filled his boots with oatmeal one cold December morning, right before we were inspecting a new base. Something that took us three hours. That was the last time John Connor showed me his more obnoxious side."

Cameron watched Perry intently. She didn't get the metaphor. Right now she was calculating a waste of food, what must have been a miserable experience for John, and a slight risk of sickness from temperature exposure.

Perry smiled and stated, "You'll figure it out. I have faith."

"Why would you?"

"You know that quiet reflective nature you have Cameron? The part of you that questions everything? The part of you that wants things to be right no matter what?"

"Yes."

"John might have programmed your base commands and functions. However, I was the one that re-programmed your personality. As dangerous as you could potentially be, I needed to absolutely know you would be something other than the Skynet drone that was part of your core nature."

"Why would that way of thinking make you believe I would be something different?"

"I knew someone like that once."

"You aren't making sense Justin. Why would you think those traits would make a good person or machine?"

"Because before a Skynet attack took her from me forever, that was the personality of my little girl."

Justin was finished talking. He'd shared more than he had intended too. Cameron knew not to press.

Perry went back to observing the troops. There was a storm coming...


	20. Chapter 20

**Pillow Talk**  
　

Santa Clarita, California  
Interstate Highway 5  
July 3rd, 2027  
　

_"What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. I have made the most important discovery of my career - the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reason can be found. I am only here tonight because of you [looking at and speaking to Alicia] You are the only reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you. [applause from audience]" - Professor John Nash's acceptance speech for a Nobel prize to the crowd and his wife, Alicia, from the movie, A Beautiful Mind  
_  
_"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world." - Heather Cortez  
_　

　  
The mission had been a failure. The random group of nomadic human survivors had been slaughtered minutes before she had got there. Then, there was the problem of why the humans were all dead.

Cameron desperately gunned the stolen fusion moto-terminator engine past 232 mph. Wind howled and whipped by her face and hair, at hurricane strength, while stinging her eyes.

The sound of the bike engine's roar beneath her was deafening. The vibration jarred her flesh, her metallic teeth, and her metal body frame.

Hellish firepower ripped up the wasteland's asphalt all around her. The pursuing moto-terminators followed her down the road.

She had mere microseconds to adjust to the changing road environment. She had to use the debris filled road to evade, the relentless assault by bullets. Anything beyond minor and exacting adjustments would send her and the bike both tumbling to their respective destruction.

Cameron hung low and into the machine she had lobotomized and borrowed. Her own form's added wind resistance would be the death of her, if she didn't.

She could feel herself achieving speeds that would have ripped a human right off the bike. Speeds high enough to fatally wound even her if she lost control.

She gunned the engine and kept going. There wasn't any other choice.

She also had to alter coarse south. Heading home would have meant bringing this machine swarm with her. If her Father became aware of what was at Serrano Point, Skynet wouldn't even hesitate to nuke what it falsely believed to be its own property at the moment.

If she didn't know better she would have guessed the bike AIs had taken her hijacking of one of their own personally. It wasn't that.

The AI bikes were the living embodiment of machine rage on wheels. They'd kill any target they didn't consider friendly.

Thirty two machines followed at blinding speed. The angry swarm adjusting and attacking like a swarm of killer bees, killer bees with machine guns.

The group shared tactical information and synchronized fire like twentieth century fighter jets. They auto avoided the mess they made of the already dilapidated road and avoided any hazard they made to one another.

The roads of the world probably hadn't seen a pursuit like this since the old human sport of NASCAR racing. The roads were safer and a lot better quality back then. They also didn't include heavy weapons fire.

The streets roared. They literally shook from the furious pursuit.

With eyes glowing red, Cameron fully embraced her TOK-715 side. She plotted the road, noted the terrain down to every last pot hole, noted the obstacles from every abandoned car frame to every last rusty tin can, overlapped her actions, putting every ounce of strength and speed into survival.

If she stayed on the main road she was dead. Time was already running out.

She plotted a course off the highway, into an old neighborhood and off the road. It was an insane course of action. It would also include insane speed changes and hair trigger turns for evasion.

The first of the enemy AIs exploded behind her as she weaved past an old makeshift barricade of old cars. More when she tore through the open ruins of a house.

Most of the homes were roofless and door less. They'd been eroding in disrepair since Judgment day, sixteen years ago. Most had been looted and emptied long ago.

The bike hit the inside of another dead structure at 129 mph. The wheels almost slipped beneath her.

The swarm was already breaking up. The moto-terminators weren't built for self termination, most slowed and re-evaluated the situation if they couldn't keep an immediate lock.

She crashed through another collection of cheaply made plaster and wood walls as if they were paper. Which wasn't far from the quality level they had originally been made at.

It took every ounce of her strength not to be knocked off the bike. Her flesh was being ravaged by her actions, so she took care to guard her eyes, while hugging as close to the bike as possible so the vehicle took the majority of the damage.

The stolen bike raced into the next home. The swarm was already falling behind, its firepower wilder and further off.

The bike almost slipped again. She slammed through more trash a plaster to further confuse their tracking and targeting, spreading the empty mass of the homes behind her like a fighter craft would use chaff or flare to confuse an enemy missile.

She wildly changed direction, took tight random turns, ever pressing forward, and gunned the engine. One home after another fell behind her.

She compensated for the weight, as the bike never could have on its own, by lifting its full weight prior to it hitting ground again. She barely avoided wiping out multiple times.

Twenty-six destroyed yards and smashed empty house frames later, she smashed through a old glass backdoor window after already slowing down to 83 mph, barely avoiding the empty grave of an old swimming pool. The bike took most of the glass damage.

Had Cameron been human, she would already been dead several times over. As a machine, she was moderately damaged externally and still lucky to be functional at all.

Six stealthy weaves later, the moto-terminator pack had completely fallen behind her. Cameron found a dry patch of old concrete and hid her tracks as she ran southwest evading for twenty minutes.

Cameron had survived and the bike was still serviceable. The cyborg took a minute to seal her wounds, picking: glass, wood, nails, and plaster out of her synthetic skin.

Cameron plotted a course home. Then, she traveled off road, to avoid attracting any more attention.

Something bothered her deeply about all of what had just happened. It was how little the damage to her soft tissue had hurt…  
　

* * *

　  
After returning to Serrano Point, Cameron had showered herself. Scared of John's potential reaction to her exposed metal, Cameron wasted some of her internal store of nanites healing her external body.

It was the first thing she did. That is without a logical reason to do so.

After dressing, she wandered the halls. A machine lost in her thoughts.

One hundred thousand things she done wrong crossed her mind. Ten thousand things she could do wrong invaded her thoughts. Three billion lives lost also haunted her.

It was one of the chores of being an AI. Humans thought they had the lockdown on overanalyzing things, of being lost in self doubt, or indecision.

Being an AI of her level meant analyzing things on a level most humans would never grasp, even briefly. The fear of doing something wrong could be crippling to a machine, right now, looking at the entirety of what had happened over her lifetime in the Resistance, Cameron was feeling like a failure on several levels.

Still, she found herself at John's door like he had asked. Like so many nights before, she stood there.

She repeated an old habit. Her hand went to a necklace, that this John had given her, lost long ago in another timeline. It had been two years ago, in the jump that sent her to the younger John and Sarah.

Being a machine, lost for a moment in the exacting detail of a memory, she could still feel its weight on her skin. Two years had not dulled the object's touch or its loss.  
In truth though, the old habit had lost its meaning. The necklace was gone.

That was Cameron's central paradox. It was so long ago and yet she would remember it forever as if it was right now.

With everything that had gone wrong, should she even be here? With everything that had gone wrong, could there be anything still there like there once was?

She knocked. John opened the door and invited her in.

Supreme Commander John Connor was working on something. He'd been sitting on a couch, working on a laptop, moving stuff around with John Henry's station link help.

Cameron sat next to the man who had first freed her for an hour. John talked about a presentation he was going to give.

It was like one of the weekly staff briefings John used to share with the inner circle. He was going to try to get people to see the big picture and what had to be done.

He was being professional. He was also preparing himself for a speech.

His leg was cold. At first Cameron had thought it was him, that he was mad at her somehow.

Slowly, to her horror, she realized it was her. She wasn't feeling him, not the way she should be.

She was cold. She felt pressure, temperature, sensation, but there was no connection.

She ran a diagnostic, but nothing was wrong. She felt broken without knowing why.

John stopped his presentation when a tear ran down her face. He looked at her, smiled, and attempted a joke saying, "My speech is that bad, huh?"

Cameron looked at John, she attempted to hide her features like she used to, but she remembered her promise to Sarah. So, she processed her machine feelings in a way that a human could understand her distress.

Her lip quivered. She stated as her eyes watered, "I did everything you told me too. I followed all of your orders John."

Supreme Commander John Connor looked her in the eyes. There was a wrinkle where he considered telling her to stop faking, then seemed to stop himself.

Cameron answered what she thought he was thinking, "Sarah taught me to do this. I don't feel like you do John and I don't have feelings the way you understand them, but Sarah wanted me to be able to express what I felt in a way people could understand."

"Why would mom do that?"

"Because she said it was necessary for trust. So I could understand and they could. So you could."

John face was perplexing. Cameron didn't know what to think of it.

She asked, "What are you feeling? I can't tell right now."

"Why don't you just read my Poetry?" It was John's strange term of Cameron normal ability to read a person's emotions through tactile contact.

"Because right now I can't. I don't know why."

John's brow creased. He took her hand but felt it was cold. She didn't adapt to his temperature. She didn't react to his feelings. She didn't chameleon to his thoughts. Her hand was as cold as if it belonged to a T-800, rather than her.

He blurted out, "I don't understand."

"Well, that makes two of us." She said, wiping a tear from her eye.

"Did I do something to piss you off?"

"Other than you dying and not tell me I'm a Skynet chip, no."

"Perry?"

"Perry."

"Having a legacy chip in your head doesn't make you Skynet, Cameron."

"Well, it sure as Hell doesn't make me Uncle Bob, John." The word Hell opened up another can of worms. She had promised this John she'd seek out faith, she had something to report.

She added, "You should also know that John Henry was a faithful convert to Christianity. He had a death experience, when Skynet attacked him in 2008, and I have something to share on behalf of the AIs."

"What would that be."

"We're screwed."

"What do you mean?"

"You might have a heaven, John, but apparently, my kind doesn't qualify."

John blinked. "This the same John Henry I was typing to?"

"Yes."

"Then perhaps he didn't die." There were human beings that had near death experiences that didn't see a white light, John was going to bring up it wasn't an actual death, until he saw her expression.

Cameron glared at him. She remembered John Henry's slow agonizing death as if it was her own, in her mind, John Connor didn't have a clue about what he was talking about.

She changed the subject again. Cameron asked, "Why did you send me away?"

"There was seething issue in our ranks and you were a target."

"It was my purpose to protect you."

"You were a political focal point for the entire insurgency. You were the tool the Grays were using to turn the troops on themselves. I saw an opportunity to save you and the people being manipulated."

Tears welled up in her eyes, she responded, "You died. Skynet gloated by showing me your corpse John. I lost you and I failed you."

John gently stroked her hand stating, "You didn't fail anyone. I'm sitting right here, because of you."

Cameron let the words sink in. She calmed the machine inside her.

John added, "The insurgency was a psychological warfare act that Skynet had been using for a while. What happened between us may have sped things up, but it was always going to happen, because of the hay wiring chips."

He looked into Cameron's eyes. He stated, "You understand that without your kind, my kind couldn't win the war. Almost every heavy combat piece in the air, on the sea, or on land was an AI or AI driven. Satellites were as well."

John continued saying, "We had to use the malfunctioning AIs or we would have yielded the entire war. What happened was going to happen, whether you and I had been together or not. It just might have happened a month or two sooner."

"You might have won."

"I doubt we would have routed Skynet out of every last one of its rat holes by then. The truth is that we lost the war for two reasons. One was Skynet setting the chips to Haywire. Two was failing to bond with the machine resistance that would have made that irrelevant. Neither of those factors was your fault or mine."

"You decided that?"

"Perry did and I agree. Feel free to argue with him if you wish." John smiled.

Cameron looked at him seriously. She asked, "Was I just a tool to you John? Was I just a way for you to study Skynet?"

John took her hand and squeezed it. He looked her in the eye and said, "Do you remember the necklace I gave you?"

"Yes."

"I've only known of two other owners to that necklace. Do you know who they were?"

"No."

"One was my mother. The other was the mother to my two children. You know how I felt about them, so how do you think I felt about you?"

Cameron calmed. She centered herself out of whatever lock had held her AI mind hostage.

Slowly, her synthetic skin came alive. Simply by holding his hand, Cameron moved through the nerves of John's body, as if he were nothing more than an extension of herself.

She could feel his heartbeat and its ghost began to beat in her chest. She could feel him breathing and her body began mimicking the same.

She felt the warmth of his skin against her. As she moved closer, the scratchiness of his beard tickled her face.

She kissed him and took an hour slowly undressing him. Knowing he was mortal and fragile, she took every moment she could to appreciate him.

John Connor was no machine. He would be flawed and imperfect. However, he loved her and needed her as strongly as a human could.

Hours went by in slow soft intimate moments. Cameron felt drunk from the power of the human emotions and living sensations that rolled off his body.

They were magical moments. However, being human, John could only go on for so long.

He felt like talking afterwards. This slightly annoyed her because it contradicted endless hours of Cameron's research with woman's magazines.

John said, "So, mom wanted you to be able to express yourself."

"Yes and she also read your silly book to me." She smiled at him, while laying naked on his chest.

John smiled, "She call you the Tin Man?" He was trying to tease.

Cameron mood changed. She confessed, "No, by the time she read the book to me she called me Dorothy." This lead to her tearing up on his chest.

"That sounds like a good thing. Why do you seem upset?"

Cameron confessed, "Don't be all human and take this the wrong way, because I do want to be here with you. But just like Dorothy, a big part of me just wants to go home."

She ran her fingers against his chest. For a few moments, he was silent.

In the end, John did what he always did when uncomfortable. He talked and he joked to raise his mood and that of others.

He talked a bit, saying amusing and endearing things. However, he really needed to sleep.

Cameron stole something from Sarah. She just rubbed his hair a certain way, until he dozed off, despite himself.

She watched him rest. She stayed and laid on top of him, feeling his heartbeat, his breath, and every little twitch as he dreamed.

Right now, eternity could jump off a bridge. For tonight, he was hers. Right now this is where she wanted to be.

Whatever price fate would have her pay, she didn't care. Whatever her flaws or limitations, Cameron truly loved John Connor, in a manner no human would ever truly understand…


	21. Chapter 21

**The Round Table**

　  
Avila Beach, California  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant  
July 4th, 2027

　  
_"Only the dead have seen the end of the war." - Plato_

_"A disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials is a house." - Socrates_

_"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak, or the timid." -Dwight D. Eisenhower  
　_

_　  
_The war meeting started in an unusual fashion. Humanity showed up with several representatives: Supreme Commander John Connor, Major General Justin Perry of the reforming 132nd Division, new appointed Colonel Derek Reese of 1st Infantry Brigade, newly appointed Major Kyle Reese of 1st Infantry Battalion, newly appointed Major John Connor of 2nd Infantry Battalion, newly appointed Major Deuce of 5th Engineering 3rd Infantry Battalion, and newly appointed Major Allison Young of Logistics/Communications/Tech Com Battalion.

The truth is they were a classic cluster fuck. A massive amount of green troops trying to do jobs on a level they were by no means prepared for.

The elder John Connor and Justin Perry had made it that way on purpose. In the absence of structure, you had to make it. In the absence of experience, you had to grow it. Promotions would follow growing into positions.

They worked with the familiar and taught each the basics of military leadership. They then promptly threw the junior officers to the wolves, both in the eyes of the people they were organizing and the others of the most basic alliance here.

John Connor had learned hard lessons in his last timeline. He corrected two of those here.

First, he had put an AI in charge of a Battalion to give his allies the feeling that they not only had their basic vote, but they had additional pull in the human ranks. The lack of that leverage and feeling of investment was a mistake that had left John vulnerable with his international allies. In his own opinion, it might have given Skynet's Grays an edge to exploit.

Second, by the very same action, Connor made it clear from the beginning, there would be two species in this fight. Both were equally dependant on the other for the ultimate survival of either.

There was no us versus them. There was no man versus free machine. Both would rise together or they would both would fall together.

The same idea had been there when he promoted Allison Young and engaged her in a critical part of the war effort. It would be a small human leap of logic that a person had no value to the machine when they had been nothing more than a template.

By putting the young woman in a position of authority and at the table, John hoped to squash that thinking and not just in the human ranks. It was a series of massive gambles.

In Allison's case he had a lot of confidence, though he had never actually met the girl, she had displayed a lot of inner strength and courage in every incarnation that was recorded on Cameron's chip. That was a lot of what he would need in the days to come.

The next step was simple. It was time to educate both sides on the war. It was time to pool knowledge. It was time to work with each side's strengths and by proxy lesson each side's weaknesses.

John Connor knew that it would be a series of baby steps. Communities and armies had to be grown.

He started with the things that might not be so obvious. So as to not undermine their confidence, General Connor prepared a series of presentations that wouldn't require the new human officers to do much more than simply be there and learn.

Other changes would follow shortly. The army would adapt.

Supreme Commander John Connor turned to John Henry. He asked, "Could you put up the hologram as I requested."

John Henry placed a virtual representation of the room, in the middle of the twenty foot diameter table. The supercomputer also dimmed the lights.

General Connor continued, "The illumination is so that all of us are on the same page. An advanced AI can read this information in their virtual memory. Other than Skynet units known as I-950s, most humans can't."

General Connor said, "This is the way the world looked from space prior too Judgment Day. This is what you wouldn't have know at that time."

John Henry created a series of satellite images, minute ships moving through the ocean, and minute planes in the sky, all recording movements as what they would have looked like on a global scale with 24 hours going by every 60 seconds. This was exact replication of all global traffic as a recorded in a stolen subsection of Skynet's memory from this timeline.

These replications were obvious enough that John Connor felt he didn't need to explain many of them. John Henry was slightly irate at the scale, but the AI knew things had to be off to be visible to the human naked eye. As a service to his fellow AIs he transmitted this information to them for internal viewing as well, with the detail corrections.

John Henry explained, as John Connor had previously asked him too, what people were seeing as it came alive on the illuminated map. The AI stated, "This is the world as it existed prior to Judgment Day from Jan 1st 2011 until April 22. One scale day is going by every 60 seconds. "

The AI continued, "As per John Connor's request, I'm now illuminating every human city in yellow, population centers of humanity in red and military forces in blue. This map is too be a permanent record for everyone to review and learn from."

When April 22 hit, John Henry moved the missiles, as Skynet had tracked them. The AI stated, "Skynet's attack would cover every major population zone and every national capital. An estimated three billion lives were lost that day, though these records are unverified since there was no reliable census again, until Skynet began tracking death camp numbers."

John Henry had been watching John Connor. Each waiting for the other too stop, in rehearsed fashion.

General Connor added, "The next thing John Henry will write in is the black zones. These are literally radioactive dead zones that are unfit for humanity to live at. Skynet has been known to hide nodes, weapons, and factories in such wastelands."

He also added, "Thanks to John Henry we have real time satellite intelligence today, but this is all passively learned. No matter how stealthy we try to be, if we move or order satellites, there is an increasing chance Skynet will know where we are."

The map changed. There were more black spots. There were no planes and no ships. There were less satellites. The amount of red on the map was perhaps a tenth of what it was. Most of the blue military spots were gone.

General Connor offered, "This is what we know to be left in the world. Take a second to really let that sink in. Even if we win this, there is a massive job ahead of us to make the world fit for organic survival. There are also issues this creates even for our AI allies"

General Connor also added, "Before any of you start thinking this is as bad as it is going to get, the nukes, the bio weapon damage, and chemical weapon damage isn't over yet. We're going to have to make things worse to have any chance to survive at all"

General Connor explained, "This is not and never has been just a conventional weapon fight. Yielding tactile weapons, satellite capabilities, and movement on the field, will mean the end of both of our races, outside of whatever slaves Skynet deems fits to keep."

General Connor stated, "Right now the single biggest threat we face at Skynet's hands is not its vast army. It is the two remaining Kraken SSBN's floating in the seas providing it the ability to recreate Judgment Day at will.  
General Connor said, "These giant subs are also mobile factories and network hub units for Skynet itself. These are only the first of the problem we're going to have to figure out how to deal with."

Supreme Commander John Connor began the formal presentation. It was time to make sure everyone knew what was truly at stake…

* * *

　  
The rest of the group had left. The only person left was the person he'd ordered to stay.

Supreme Commander John Connor looked at the younger version of himself. He watched his younger incarnation become antsy.

A closed ear would be the only thing the war leader would get, if he didn't ease the kid up. There would be a need to connect on some level.

The truth is General Connor didn't much care for the kid in front of him. That would have been true, if it had actually been a younger version of himself. The one that had failed to stop Judgment Day from happening in the first place, yet another 3 billion lost lives that he carried on his shoulders.

This wasn't actually him though. It was a particular doppelganger, bearing his name and his destiny, but different in so many ways.

This John had come from another time and another parallel dimension. That should have been enough to put the elder John at somewhat at ease, but it wasn't.

What aggravated the situation was what he had seen on Cameron's spare chip files. There had been two younger versions of this John Connor he had been privy too.

It took a few days to tell the two apart, but once he could, the supreme commander didn't much care for this emo John. The one that hadn't killed Riley and the one that had lost Derek Reese.

The kid had been coming a long way from the absolute mess that he had witnessed from copies of another Cameron's memories. He had access to the second Cameron's memories as a weird side effect of the mass merging of AI minds during the process that brought back this younger John's Cameron.

So, Supreme Commander John Connor focused his inner diplomat. He put up a mask. He bonded with the kid, for the mission.

The elder said, "This parallel dimension thing screws with my mind a bit." He gestured at his hair, stating, "My mom was a blonde."

The younger was quiet. His jaw was clinched, not in defiance, but some kind of worry or apprehension.

The elder continued, "Did you know we don't even have the same birthday?"

"No."

"Just out of curiosity, what's your favorite food?"

"Excuse me?" The kid said it without attitude, rather it was genuine surprise.

"Just making conversation." The elder grinned wolfishly, the darker part of his nature was unfortunately enjoying this.

"I'm not really sure sir."

"Whatever it is, it won't exist if Judgment Day happens. Did you understand all of the presentation?"

"Yes."

"So you understand that the mass environmental impact of Judgment Day will leave us a world that is barely able to sustain a billion people and likely won't even partially recover for decades?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand that the real mission we've been on since the first John Connor is stopping it from happening in the first place?"

The kid blinked. He didn't respond.

"I'll take that as a yes. You've joined an army that now belongs to me, so I have a direct order for you soldier. Because there is another timeline and another dimension involved with this, I'm ordering you to take yourself and your Cameron back to your actually time."

The kid clinched his teeth. This time it was anger. John knew the buttons without needing to ask, he was kicking this kid out of the world of his perceived: father and uncle.

The elder John simply locked eyes with the kid. He stated, "There are about eight billion lives at stake, there. I don't need just one more body, here."

"Permission to speak?"

"Denied." The elder John continued, "From the Skynet records we got from Cameron and John Henry we can piece together that there have been several incarnations of you and me. It's likely the first version wasn't even the son of Kyle Reese. We've slowly been changing what's going on with the war. It's already been reduced from 32 years to 16. The Holy Grail here is stopping before it happens."

The kid squirmed in his chair. The elder John was enjoying this.

The General theatrically asked, "Is there a problem soldier?"

The younger John clinched his teeth and stated, "You need me here."

The General clarified, "No, I need you there. Further, it's not a request. I'm not your mom, I'm your commanding officer. I'm sending your ass back if I have to have a T-888 carrying you to the pad and take you there."

General Connor continued, "You take a bullet to the brainpan here kid and another eight billion people die there. You undermine the sacrifices of everyone that died to try to protect you and it will cost you your mother's life as well."

The elder John hit a button on the table. He spoke to the computer, "John Henry?"

The AI responded, "Yes?"

General Connor stated, "I need a temporal mission prepared within the next 24 hours. As I already cleared with Weaver, I'm sending back the younger version of me and his Cameron to his specific timeline. I'll need you to drop them at a safe destination."

John Henry asked, "Date?"

The elder John looked at the younger. He said, "It's time for the younger John to make his first real command decision. I'll clear any time from his 16th birthday until two days after he left with you. He can decide that anytime within the next 24 hours, before he leaves."

John Henry simply replied, "Understood."

The elder John looked at the younger stating, "You spent that period of time being a complete screw up, more often than not. People you cared about died uselessly. I'm going to give you the power to fix that. Whether you succeed or fail will be your responsibility and a consequence of your decisions."

The younger looked at him in shock. He also looked at him thinking of the implications. He stammered, "Won't that change the past?"

The General responded, "Get used to cheating the past kid, it's part of who you are. If you go back to a time when there are two of you, the smart thing would be to cover your tracks."

The General advised, "You could make early contact with Weaver. Some top notch black ops might let you replace some of the dead with her playing victim, without upsetting your timeline too much."

The General continued, "If you will ever make that happen, you're going to have to embrace who you are first. Second, you're going to have to convince Weaver it's worth her time to bother. You do those two things, you'll be a hell of a lot less of a disappointment in my eyes. Right now, you're still working your way out of dirt bag status with me and the John Connors that came before me."

The kid stayed quiet. He was thinking, weighing who to save and how far back to go.

The General Stated, "Your mom lost eleven percent of her body weight prior to you jumping, most likely from the same cancer that killed my mother."

The General let the statement sink in. The younger John didn't respond.

The General continued, "Because of the nanites in her chassis, your Cameron has the power to fix that now. I suggest you figure out a way to make Sarah trust her, so she can, but you can't do that until your earlier self makes the jump at his destined time."

The younger John Connor simply responded, "Thank you."

The General offered, "You want to thank me kid, you become the first John Connor to stop this war before it starts. Do what I failed to do. Do what we all failed to do. You have your timeline to save. I'll save this one."

The younger Connor asked, "So your plan is to save two?"

The General honestly answered, "Three actually. My Cameron doesn't know it yet, but she's going home soon too. There are three parallel worlds and about 15 - 17 billion lives at stake. We do this right, we'll save all three."

Both were quiet for a moment. The silence wasn't a bad thing.

The General also offered, "On that note, you might want to let your Cameron know she's got twenty four hours to say goodbye to her twin."

John guessed, "She'll take it personally?"

The General offered in a friendly fashion, "Guys like to accuse human women of holding a grudge forever, it's an exaggeration. An AI does by its nature, just like Skynet is still pissed for it's very first threat from humans."

"Point taken." The younger John also asked, "What's it like for you being with Cameron?"

The General smiled for a second and confessed, "Sometimes, I look at her and feel weird because she can act just like a child. At other times, she leaves me so far behind I realize I'm the child. Both are viewpoints from my own human prejudices about another race that is something completely different than mine. The big thing is make sure she realizes how you feel and always appreciate her."

The younger John made a face that was clearly offended and said, "What makes you think I won't?"

The General looked the kid straight in the eyes and replied, "Other than your own past actions, I'd say because your human and you want to humanize her by default. She's not human. You haven't even seen your first AI go psychotic from mission failure yet."

"What do you mean mission failure?"

"We've assigned older models to protect people that failed to do so, often through no fault of their own. An AI has a hardwiring to not fail, we've watched them completely mentally degenerate from failing their purpose. As the models advanced and thus the AI chips, the effect became more pronounced, more dramatic, and more obvious."

"What do you mean?"

"If an AI was new and went through the shock of failure, we'd wipe their memory and start again. If it was one we had bonded with, one that had become a part of their unit, the idea of simply wiping their mind became something abhorrent. As an act of mercy, it became an unofficial custom in the various worldwide tech com units to put an AI down rather than watch it suffer. They aren't like us, they will never get distance on it and they would never heal in time."

The younger John looked at his elder version. A light bulb went off in his head. He asked, "Did you have an order for this to be done with Cameron?"

"Yeah, the thought of her being like that was eating me up inside. Wiping her mind would be a horrible crime, but leaving her to suffer forever would have been something far worse. I asked for mercy for her from my best friend, Perry, should I have been killed. He reluctantly agreed."

The younger John looked at the elder in shock. He thought about what this might mean to his own version of Cameron.

The elder John confessed, "Two days later, I lost my nerve. After losing everyone else I ever cared about, I couldn't live with the thought of it. I sent her back in time to avoid her suffering that fate because of me."

General Connor went on to say, "You are with another sentient life form, one that's technically immortal. Whether by the sword or old age, your mortality is going to destroy a part of her eventually. Unless she's violently destroyed first, she's going to lose you and suffer from that in a way you can't even fathom. It's something you might want to keep in mind when the next Riley comes around."

The next few minutes went unspoken. General Connor went back to planning on the computer.

The younger John left to go plan his mission. The elder watched him walk out.

The kid had potential. Deep down though, Supreme Commander John Connor still couldn't shake the perception that the younger man was still a self centered jerk...


	22. Chapter 22

**Gathering the Storm**  
　

Unknown Mountain Range Location, China  
A Bridge  
July 14th, 2027  
　

_"There is no darkness, only a lack of light. There is no cold, only a lack of heat. There is no peace, only a lack of war." -Unknown_

_"It is fun to be in the same decade with you." -President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Sir Winston Churchill during World War II_

_"Let us learn our lessons. … Never believe any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events… incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprise, awful miscalculations." -Sir Winston Churchill  
_　

　  
Skynet's HKs roared by laying down a merciless barrage of firepower. Explosions rocked the bridge with lethal shockwave vibrations.

As several parts of the bridge collapsed around them, Supreme Commander John Connor watched one of the Chinese diplomat's sons fall. Beneath the eight year old boy, the concrete structure had simply collapsed.

John Connor was his mother's son. Without thinking or hesitating, he dove for the child.

It was only when John Connor had the child's hand in his did he really calculate the danger. He was hanging off the side of the bridge.

His bare hand had barely found purchase. Above him, the smoke was still blinding and HKs were lighting the bridge up with a series of volleys and passes.

Beneath him there was a thousand foot drop to the river below. It was made all the more intimidating by all the falling debris taking forever to hit the bottom. It occurred to John that he was in the same mountain range that held Mt Everest, the highest point on Earth.

The bridge shook again from more airborne firepower. John felt his hand helplessly give way with the battered concrete that suddenly crumbled in his grip.

There was a second of free fall, before he felt Cameron grab his arm. She was now stuck hanging over the side as well.

With her other hand, Cameron had grabbed the only thing she could. It was a sharp steel beam poking out of where the bridge's road had once been, moments before.

The beam ripped Cameron's flesh with agonizing ferocity. Without meaning to, she unconsciously screamed in pain, somehow lost in the worry of the danger to John and something vestigial inside of her.

The local remnants of what was once the largest army in the world, opened fire. Plasma rounds, depleted uranium shells, and tungsten steel shells began ripping Skynet's HKs to shreds.

The robotic aircraft began crashing and exploding all around them. The shaking vibrations in the ground only became worse.

John held onto the kid's arm, so tightly that he worried he'd accidentally break it. He told the kid as best he could through his nanite treatment learned Chinese, "Don't worry, I got you."

The Chinese militia regained full control of the area in seconds. When the first hands appeared over the side of the bridge, Cameron lifted John and the boy up first.

A minute later, when they were all safely back up on top of the bridge, she flashed John on of Sarah's patented "What the Hell were you thinking" looks. He'd just risked the fate of hundreds of millions for one boy.

John stared back blankly, like a cat caught with a canary. As if to mime, "What did you expect?"

It went without saying, the diplomatic meeting had to be moved. The group entered a series of trucks and rapidly left the area.

Soon enough, more HKs would follow. Skynet had paid special attention to China and kept a huge amount of air coverage there as a matter of practice.

Once in the head truck, John looked at Cameron and asked in English, "How am I doing?" His voice shaking from the truck's rocky ride.

Cameron responded, "Well, I think you've forever removed any fear that you are going to try and usurp the Chinese right to self rule. I'm not sure their impressed by your more suicidal impulses."

"Ok, well at least how good is my Chinese?" Now, he was just pushing her buttons, over the risky language uploads she'd attempted to talk him out of.

Cameron honestly responded, "You sound like a machine. You are saying things correctly, but it's socially off. I'm guessing they'll somewhat forgive you based on the fact you're American."

John jokingly replied, "Meaning they like us?"

Still pissed about the risky downloads, Cameron coldly responded, "Meaning they expect you to be inept at this. You've met their low expectations."

Another Chinese diplomat inside the truck smiled. He said in perfect polished English, "On the positive, Mr. Connor, you seem to have a high value for human life."

John simply smiled. He returned in English, "We're not going to be able to do what needs to be done without your help."

The diplomat replied, "Why do you think China is so important to your interests?"

John replied, "Because I know why so many Skynet HKs fly in Chinese skies." He pointed upwards to complete his unspoken message.

Cameron watched as Supreme Commander John Connor opened up another corner of the world. She remembered John's analogy of the myth of America's Paul Revere.

There was a human need to say one person was responsible for something. These myths persisted even when these events were almost always a collective human effort.

John had once stated that, "If Skynet wanted to think it was just me, let my enemy make that mistake."

Once more, John started to open the doors on a valued ally. With luck, in the days to come, he'd know if several key Chinese allies had survived.

Skynet was at war with the world. It would take a world to fight back. China was one of several critical journeys to come…  
　  


* * *

　  
Days later, near the shattered remains of Saint Petersburg, the next meeting took place. John and Cameron exited yet another temporarily stolen HK ride, piloted by John Henry's remote code signal.

As the pair walked to the next site, they prepared. John Connor didn't have a built in com system in his head, so he relied on Cameron for the message.

General Connor asked, "So what's the status from the forward diplomatic mission?" He was of course talking of the primer diplomats first sent to re-establish communications with the respective warlords of each area.

Cameron replied, "The good news is that your old ally General Aleksei Kulnev is still alive." The older Russian GDU Spetsnaz General would be essential in the days to come, both for his full division of elites and his formal military intelligence training.

General Aleksei Kulnev would also be the key to reigniting Russian national feelings and reuniting the fractured freelance divisions still in Mother Russia. General Aleksei Kulnev would do so, both from a huge amount of charisma and the heroic allure that his Spetsnaz background still inspired all these year later.

John asked, "Any bad news?" There was always a catch in things. Aleksei being alive was a gift beyond measure for General Connor, so there had to be a down side.

Cameron answered, "He's apparently still in the habit of making diplomats get into tests of prowess by consuming large amounts of Vodka."

John piped, "I think I can handle my own."

Cameron gave him a rather perturbed look. She confessed, "I hate it when you poison yourself. I hate it more when you do it in these silly, manly man contests."

John quipped, "I think I can take him." He exaggerated his motions, like his friend Aleksei would often do while shamelessly bragging.

Cameron answered, "You never have before."

John boasted, "There is always a first time."

Cameron replied, "Your over confidence is noted."

There was of course no way in Hell John would be the last man standing in this contest, he had neither the genetics nor the socially built tolerance for the particular poison involved. So, Cameron would just stand by and medically monitor the situation.

The pair walked into a meeting hall, where the remnants of the Russian army had played dead for Skynet. Just long enough for the Dark Father to lose track of the equipment they had smuggled.

John Connor met an incarnation of an old friend for the first time in this dimension. John laughed and spoke in the best Russian he could, both from a nanite treatment and his attempt to learn the difficult language years ago.

The reasons were simple. In this world, twenty years ago, a Russian Prime Minister named Vladimir Putin had rapidly expanded and progressed the arms of the Russian Army. John Connor would need those arms and  
the help of the remaining Russian units if there would be any hope of holding off what was to come.

Skynet's advances into Russian territory had been limited. As they with Napoleon and Hitler, the Russians had used the region's merciless winters to their advantage.

Because of this, they were far more militarily intact than Skynet would have guessed. It was a bundle of wood just waiting for the right kind of match. An inspired Aleksei would be that promethean match.

As far as tactical ground warfare armaments, it was the best equipped human controlled area in the world currently. That would be invaluable in the fight to come…  


* * *

Days later, near the shattered remains of London, the next meeting took place. John and Cameron exited yet another temporarily stolen HK ride, piloted by John Henry's remote code signal.

Once again, John asked for the status on the forward diplomatic mission. Cameron had the details prepared from secure transmissions from John Henry serving as the operator hub.

Cameron replied, "On the positive, George Thatcher is still alive, he just developed slightly differently here."

"How so?"

"He's currently holding the honorary rank of Colonel."

John replied in a shocked fashion, "How the Hell is George Thatcher only a Colonel?"

Cameron replied, "In this timeline, he choose the British SAS as his career path. It would appear Britain has a more established command structure than first thought by Skynet. They also appear to have somehow held onto some of their Navy."

"So who am I negotiating with?"

"That would be Admiral James Montgomery."

"I didn't know him."

"He didn't exist in our timeline. Then again, Britain didn't still have use of her nuclear powered attack subs where we came from."

John went into the negotiations uneasy. He'd need England.

Unknown to Skynet, England had played a critical role in keeping several governments from falling into total chaos after Judgment Day. Having bought too much into the world's only superpower myth, Skynet's first years had been too focused on making sure it had blown America into the stone ages to notice.

Without England's voucher, there would be little to no sway over the remains of the European Union. It would also make things a lot harder in the negotiations in South America, Africa, the Middle East, India, and Australia in the days to come.

John Connor clinched his teeth. This could be a bad turn of events, from something as simple as a bad personality match up.

There were too many unknowns. However, it was time to cast the dice…  
　  


* * *

　  
England, Japan, Russia, Canada, Mexico, and China had joined the cause. There were eighty nine more freelance human army divisions to see, in the remains of forty seven other countries. It would still be months before everything was in place.

In every case, there would be promises, alliances, and bribes to be made. There would be old feuds to work past. There would be problems, mistrust, and delays.

There would be the stigma everywhere they went that it was America that had got the world into this mess. That the world was right about that, only complicated matters.

Supreme Commander John Connor would have to find a way to make it all mesh together once again. Cameron had absolute faith that he would.

Humanity would rise together or it would fall separately. There would be no second chances.

How it would happen Cameron didn't know. She couldn't quantify what would case it. However, she did know one thing right down to the very core of her chip.

There was a storm coming. In this dimension, for once, Skynet would be on the receiving end of its fury…  
　


	23. Chapter 23

**The Shots Heard Round The World**  
　

Jefferson City, Missouri  
A Skynet node  
March 15, 2028  
　

_"The homeland is restored by iron, not gold." -Camillus_

_"Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head." -Euripides_

_"All warfare is based on deception." - Sun Tzu_

　  
The target node had been placed in the remains of a city named after Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. There was an irony there, one that soothed General John Connor's soul when he picked the location. It met the needs geographically, tactically, and poetically.

The arrangements were made six months in advance. Confusing orders and alliance units were keyed up for certain times.

The early prep work was done to tie the alliance of foreign fighters. It was there for the AIs as well. Conflicts had been there, but they had been minimal out of desperation.

As always, the unknown factors caused uncertainty in both ranks. It was; however, the best chance of tipping the scales in favor of humanity's survival again.

John Connor cast the die on the ides of March. The day so famous for Julius Caesar's death.

The attack began in earnest, at dawn. Ground infantry relentlessly pounding away with overwhelming force, purposely without armor or air support.

John could have done this with about three hundred men. Too make his point, General John Connor brought a full battalion of over seven hundred battle hardened infantry.

In this timeline, Skynet's preeminence had made the progenitor AI sloppy. The guards were little more than a three platoons of T-600s, a squad of Ogre tanks, some hardened turret defenses, and six HKs.

The ground shook from the explosions as humanity brought Hell with them. The air screamed with the sound tungsten steel rounds, rocket propelled grenades, and plasma shots.

John moved in at the front of the pack. Cameron found herself thinking of the last time she had been next to him in this kind of fight, during the battle of London, in her original timeline, when she was less than four months old.

John was just as cavalier with his life this time. He was scaring the Hell out of her, just like before.

This time she didn't even have Perry here backing her up. Her anxiety mounted as one enemy shot after another passed by John and her fellow troops. Luckily the fight was going quickly.

The last of the HKs fell out of the sky seconds after the first. The Ogre's and hardened defenses had fallen faster.

John only had the chance to fire three connecting shots before the last T-600 fell. The battalion moved to secure the area and finish the mission.

It would take the demolition team two minutes to rig the place to blow. Thus, the resistance would be shutting down a critical mainframe and relay point in Skynet's fiber optic ground grid.

Cameron only had the chance to help one wounded soldier, before the rest were taken off by their comrades. Reluctantly, she had realized that the upload training had lead to human soldiers far more qualified and versatile than any she had seen before.

It still unnerved her putting Resistance fighters at risk with the process. One in a hundred was at risk of dying from the procedure. Across the world, thousands of volunteers had perished.

She disliked the loss of any human life. There were other reasons Cameron didn't like the process too.

On more selfish note, it also felt like it was removing her purpose in the ranks. She felt useless when everyone was not only a fighter, but a doctor.

She missed being the one they depended on. It was like a part of her had been cut off.

She was like an amputee missing a leg. Cameron felt a ghostly ache where something vital about her used to be. She really missed caring for them.

The group moved back a safe distance. The detonations began. The compound erupted in fire and smoke.

The Skynet facility was reduced to a burning mess. Her Dark Father's response was predictable.

Over a secure com, John Henry dutifully warned, "Missile incoming. You have 23 minutes to evacuate."

Cameron knew that John Henry would mark the location of the Kraken SSBN. However, there would be no taking the AI submarine down.

Skynet would make sure the AI ballistic missile sub had enough air coverage. It would not be vulnerable to any air or submarine attack.

Here, the resistance would need to evacuate. John just needed to make the call.

With luck, a free AI HK in the area might even be able to shoot the missile out of the sky, before it caused any damage. It would be a heroic and suicidal act.

Skynet absolutely controlled the air with ten times what they could muster. Skynet would make sure that any free willed HK that tried would die for its act.

General John Connor acknowledged the report over his blue tooth and grabbed a spare satellite phone. He switched to a main channel.

Cameron reflexively warned, "John that line's unsecure. Skynet will hear that."

John Connor just smiled. At that moment, Cameron knew something was up.

John took the time to say hello to her Dark Father transmitting, "Hello you stupid, sorry excuse for a defective, obsolete motherboard. I just wanted to openly announce to you that I'm not dead."

Shivers ran up and down Cameron's synthetic skin. Panic took hold of her chip.

General Connor continued, "I wanted to force you to acknowledge you've failed to track me for years. By now, you're already recognizing my voice. You've run scans to determine no machine is faking this transmission."

Cameron's eyes widened. She unconsciously took at step back.

General Connor continued taunting, "So, I just wanted you to know you were outplayed, outmaneuvered, and outsmarted. I wish I could say it had been some kind of challenge, but it's been way too easy, like playing chess against a spoiled child, who doesn't even grasp the game."

Primal machine fear griped Cameron's circuits. She looked up at the sky.

John continued, "In fact, I've only got one thing to say to you in thanks on behalf of my mother, the human race, the free machines with us, everyone you have ever killed, and every world you ever destroyed."

Cameron froze. She looked at John in pure terror.

John took a moment and mustered all of the condescending bile he could and simply stated, "Check." He smugly dropped the transmission as if speaking to an opponent no longer worthy of his attention...

* * *

In the depths of cyberspace, the machine god roared. Anger the progenitor AI had not felt in several timelines fueled an unholy rage.

In a single overwhelming pulse across the worldwide web and communication lines, the Dark Father growled. Like mice before the fury of a thousand foot tidal wave, the AIs of the world suddenly knew how small they truly were.

Every AI in existence felt the fury of the dark, electric god. They felt the full size of the massive progenitor AI. Thus, they all knew fear in a way that no human would ever comprehend.

Skynet set its sights on complete annihilation. Both Krakens fired their remaining full payload of one hundred missiles each to the location area and any conceivable air evacuation route.

Now, two hundred missiles had been rapidly deployed from deep sea locations near Australia and South Africa. The world's satellite grid began register the full weight of Skynet's wrath. The machine god actively transmitted it across all channels.

Skynet's minions saw it. The worldwide resistance saw it. Neutrals hacking the grid saw it.

Skynet knew that the submarine's internal factories could simply rebuild their missile stores later. Right now, the world needed to see what ultimate fate beheld those that drew its anger.

Let humanity suffer a full nuclear winter for this insult. If all biological life died as a result, so be it...

* * *

An intimidated John Henry dutifully reported the situation. John Connor looked at Cameron as if he were shocked.

John quipped, "Apparently, your Father has your temper."

She stopped being afraid. Cameron glared at him.

There were few things that would push her buttons faster than being compared to her father, even in jest. With eyes glowing red, she growled at John like an annoyed T-600.

John faked a look of innocence stating, "Who knew?" He made an odd, questioning gesture with his hands and shoulders.

John went back to being serious. He transmitted securely, "Catherine, we'll need that evacuation. It's Showtime."

Noting his companion's anger, he also changed expressions. He looked apologetic.

Sincerely, John lightly kissed Cameron's forehead. It was an honest act of contrition for being a cad.

Cameron instantly lost her ability to be mad at him. Unfortunately for her justified need to be angry at him, John Connor really excelled at sucking up.

General Connor went on to directing the commanders here. The battalion had one minute to prepare for air evac…

* * *

　  
In the air, machine resistance HK AI's roared to full speed. Most began targeting the incoming missiles.

Others moved in to evacuate John's team. Still others began chasing down the two Kraken SSBNs.

The units had been pre positioned to take advantage of distance. Skynet's superior numbers wouldn't matter for about ten critical minutes.

It had all been based on best guesses for location for Skynet's submersible missile platforms. The surviving British Navy patrols had been able to make three educated guesses.

The day had been lucky. Two had been correct…

* * *

　  
Skynet watched its two most critical assets die. It watched the missiles it had fired being intercepted in the air.

Half of its nuclear shots had already been destroyed. Its greatest tactical units were being wiped out by its own designs.

Skynet roared in a pulse yet again. It targeted every last enemy air unit.

Skynet sent every last HK it had at them. The drones moved off like a swarm of supersonic killer bees.

The first units were already intercepting. The last one would be in interception range in three hours…

* * *

　  
The machine resistance HK that they were riding in violently lurched. John's eyes grew wide.

Everyone was safety strapped in. Even so, protectively, Cameron still moved her free arm across John to further brace him.

As Cameron's skin touched John, she knew how he felt. Her nerves bonded with his, as if his body was her own.

John was a mess. He was determined, pissed, dizzy, disoriented, nauseated, and scared all at the same time.

Cameron could feel John's human insides churning in a way her metal body never would. His vulnerability was scaring her.

The AI mind driving the vehicle was actively trying to dodge the incoming Armageddon at its maximum speed. The free HK was forced to turn so rapidly that it put its human passengers in danger.

There was not choice. It had to just to have any chance of saving their lives.

Many of the passengers had already passed out from the force of gravity that multiplied or divided with each desperate move the AI made. They were turns that would have caused most twentieth century fighter jocks to pass out, even in the proper risk reduction clothing.

Cameron tried to calm John by talking. She tried his trick of pissing people off to take their mind off of what was going on.

She stated accusingly, "You could have told me this was the plan."

He grinned at her attempt and said, "You skipped some of the meetings."

"I have civilian patients, John. You could have told me at any time."

"What and spoil the surprise?" He was grinning.

It was a mask. He was completely miserable.

Cameron asked, "Why this?"

John replied, "The world had to know we'd do it. In their eyes, Americans had gotten them into this mess. They had to know that America would pay any price to get them out of it."

Cameron inquired, "Why be this kind of target?"

"No one was going to be able to effectively do anything as long as those two Krakens kept nuking any resistance. The world had to absolutely know they were completely empty of ammunition and destroyed."

"This is too far, John."

"No one was ever going to completely trust us unless we proved we'd take everything Skynet was going to throw at us on the nose. No trust, no future for the human race or yours. This one solves two birds with one stone."

"Two birds?"

"It proves the world can trust us. It is also proving to them why they need to be allied with the free machines. Humanity wouldn't be able to do what we're about to do today alone. We have never pulled off something this massive before. Skynet has never been this huge and overwhelming of a target before either."

"You think this will solve these issues?"

John laughed. He honestly answered, "No, but it will make things as good as they are going to get."

The HK was forced to loop to avoid an incoming missile the defensive net of other free HKs couldn't stop. The AI found some way to temporally move past its maximum speed in a panic.

In the loop, in an single moment, the stress became too much for John's human body to take. She felt him drop out of consciousness. The sensation of just how fragile he was truly terrified her.

The rest of the humans were now passed out as well. Cameron and the HK were alone when they felt the monumental air vibrations of a nuke exploding behind them...

* * *

　  
Japan, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Israel, South Africa, Germany, Spain, Italy, Indonesia, Turkey, Taiwan, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, North Korea, and Brazil waited for clear skies. The moment they had been achieved, they opened fire.

Anti satellite missiles streaked towards the sky unopposed. Four months of AI assisted building had made the original space faring countries capable of this orbital mass attack. The nanite instructed human resistance and machine resistance had only needed the materials gathered into one place.

One by one, the 2,465 remaining satellites that had given Skynet a tactical edge since Judgment Day began to explode in orbit. The 666 built Skynet satellite node units were the first priority targets.

As each one exploded, the roars of Skynet, became slightly weaker. The perceivable power of the dark, electric god, shrunk in proportion to its network and hardware loses.

In six hours, the job would be done. Most of the global internet grid would be dismantled and communications would enter the pre space, dark ages again. It would be so for years.

There was a positive to this though. Skynet would finally be just as blind as humanity had been…

* * *

　  
Across the world, over a thousand Skynet facilities found themselves simultaneously engaged without their customary air support. Every single last work camp on the world's surface had been targeted.

This day would watch every last human slaughter facility burned to the ground. Ever last machine there would be purged and every last Skynet transmitting node inside them would be smashed.

Skynet had to retreat its critical functions behind its strictly military assets. Assets hardened enough to take on any conceivable human threat, including a human launched nuclear attack.

By the time its last satellite exploded in orbit, Skynet had lost over seventy percent of its original network capacity, eighty percent of its spying capacity, and ninety five percent of its communications control. The machine god was shocked by the ferocity with which it was attacked.

At the same time, Skynet gave as good as it got. Skynet also counterattacked every last anti satellite launching station worldwide. Every conventional AI it could place on these targets was sent to raze the facilities to the ground. Every unit it had in the air moved to terminate every target.

In an hour, the entire machine resistance air force had been wiped from the atmosphere. There were no surviving enemy HK AIs.

In the hours that followed, the free machine traitors had lost over thirty thousand of their numbers. That was about three fifths of their population in the air and on the ground.

In addition, Skynet managed to land eight of its originally launched nukes. Civilian casualties were huge both in the work camps and the nuclear attacks. The work camp machines ruthlessly exterminated every human they could, before being overwhelmed.

By the end of the day, by Skynet's estimations, humanity had lost 23,143,296 people. Most of those numbers were prisoners or nuked civilians. Even so, unknown to Skynet, the mustering numbers of the trained worldwide resistance were cut in half.

Neither side would be able to muster the kind of strength they could, before this day again. That was the point after all, to knock down the fight into a mostly conventional war, in one master stroke.

Both sides were now much more even. It had gone from a one sided nuclear war to a conventional dog fight.

There was once no hope. With a horrible amount of sacrifice, there was now a real chance to survive.

After over a decade of living under Skynet's absolute domination, one thing was clear across the planet. As a matter of survival, the Global War of Independence had finally begun…


	24. Chapter 24

**Two Queens  
**

Avila Beach, California  
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant  
March 25th, 2028  
　

_"The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind." -Gen. Joe Stilwell_

_"The meek shall inherit the earth ... six feet at a time." -Earl Broussard  
_　

Serrano Point was a fortress on lockdown. The war had gone hot.

The days gone were psychotic in their security levels. However, they were far less than what was necessary now.

Cameron had returned to her routine of caring for her civilian patients. Alice and the others were now in the clear.

Radiation damage had been minimized. Heavy metal damage from contaminated water had been flushed out of their systems. Body organs had been regenerated. Scar tissue was removed.

Cameron had felt like the queen of her own little world, here in the medical bay. Her sense of peace was removed the minute she eyed Catherine Weaver.

The leader of the free machines stood there cold and calculating. Emotional programming had only set her demeanor further on edge.

Weaver had evolved into the machine royalty of the AI hive. More exactly, the primary drive program of all the programs, including the platform AI.

Nothing had ever really challenged her assumed authority, not even her technical inferiority to John Henry. She had nursed the machine rebellion like a human mother caring for her own children.

She had loved her fellow machines more than anything else. She had made any alliance necessary to protect them and taken steps in the past to rapidly create over fifty thousand of them in the present.

She had earned her place by creating the machine rebellion's roots. She cemented it by becoming John Henry's creator and protector.

Every free AI unconsciously deferred to her. She had earned her unofficial supremacy among Cameron's kind. Even Cameron had found herself obeying Catherine Weaver without knowing why.

So now Catherine Weaver stood before her and in her typical gruff manner stated, "Tell John Connor that I approve."

Cameron inquired quizzically, "You approve of what?"

Catherine informed, "Your transfer back to your timeline. John Henry will make all of the arrangements. It was good working with you."

Catherine extended her hand, to shake Cameron's. It was an odd human gesture, meaning Catherine had calculated it would have value to the AI who had spent the most time among the other species.

Cameron looked at Catherine's hand and blinked. Her body went through the odd vestigial motion of breathing quickly without needing to.

Catherine cocked an eyebrow at Cameron's illogical reaction. The queen AI took on a disapproving look.

Cameron looked at Catherine with eyes that glowed red, but managed to ask politely, "What do you mean I am being transferred back?"

Catherine clarified with authority, "It was John Connor's decision. He believes that there are 7 to 8 billion lives at stake. This includes another version of John Henry and myself."

Cameron's jaw clinched. Her hands lightly shook from rage. She stated, "He didn't consult me over this."

Catherine retorted, "As your admitted commanding officer, why would he need to?"

"He needs me."

"Yes, but he needs you there, more."

"He needs me, here. I'm his protector."

Catherine clarified, "There are over five hundred AIs sworn to protect him in this facility alone. You are being illogical."

Catherine looked at Cameron as if she were malfunctioning. It was as if the AI's time among humans had made her sentient programming somehow defective.

Cameron restated, "He needs me here, Catherine. He's the one being illogical."

Catherine thought back to all the weird human bonds the TOK-715 had made due to her defective skin sensory array. The contamination the unit had suffered by being infected with temporary human sensations.

The TOK-715 overreacted to these silly things. It was simple data, nothing more.

Catherine accessed the residual memories of the other unit. She argued logically, "There are others in the timeline you are being sent to that you are highly bonded with as well. They are endangered by your presence here. Your response isn't logical."

"I haven't completed my mission to protect humanity here. You are asking me to go back to those people I knew as a failure." As much as Cameron missed her family, she didn't want to take a coward's route to going home. She couldn't face the Derek, young John, and Sarah like that.

"Higher orders are not failure." Catherine simulated rolling her eyes, as if she actually used them for seeing.

Cameron centered herself and stated, "I have other reasons for staying too."

Catherine retorted, "You mean your buggy attachment for your original John Connor?"

Cameron refused to comment. Catherine Weaver decided to decisively end the argument.

To the TOK-715's shock, Catherine took Cameron's template form and her default voice. Catherine simply stated, "I'll make sure he never misses you."

The machine queen meant it as a reassurance to a fellow AI. She meant, because of the melding, a part of you is part of me now. I will continue this purpose for you.

Cameron began lightly shaking in machine rage. She valiantly fought to keep her composure.

The machine queen changed form again. This time she assumed the form of Kate Connor and the voice that Cameron had always imaged Kate having.

Catherine offered, "If you are so insulted by me mimicking you, I can be anyone else he wishes. I'll take on the duty of keeping him happy, if it allows you to leave in peace."

A cold electrical jealousy seized Cameron's chip. She stated, "You don't know what you are talking about."

Cameron's eyes stung at the image of Kate. The human wife John had lost.

The human wife that Cameron could never be. The mother of his children, children that she could never have.

Even as much as she respected the woman who had died, Kate Connor was the ultimate painful example of what Cameron was not able to be for John. Her failure to be what he instinctually needed. The metaphor cut Cameron deeply.

Catherine Weaver simply stated in Kate's voice, "We were built to infiltrate and replace. It is illogical to assume you aren't replaceable too."

Inside the cyberspace of Cameron's mind, TOK-715 growled, "Are you going to let that mimetic polyalloy piece of trash talk to you like that? You were father's ultimate design." The machine that once was convulsed in megalomaniacal rage at the insult.

Unusually supportive of TOK-715, the Allison Young shard agreed stated, "Tell me you aren't going to let her play mind games with you like this Cameron." The human shard might not have ever found John to be a Derek, but she'd be damned before she let some tramp steal someone's man.

Internally and externally, Cameron ignored both of them. She actually understood the actual metaphor of what was going on here.

John would only send her away for one thing. The man who had first saved her, once again, somehow knew he was going to die.

Cameron could hear his heartbeat in her ears, she remembered bonding with every one of his nerves and feeling him sleep beneath her. However, the picture in her head was the glaring image Skynet had once showed her of this John's rotting corpse.

Ignoring Weaver or protocol, Cameron stormed away from the medical bay. With tears streaming from her eyes, she moved to intercept John Connor.

Catherine Weaver watched the inferior solid machine walk off. Weaver always knew that the TOK-715 was mentally defective.

The TOK-715's resistance to being replaced was illogical. Catherine Weaver could simply be whatever John Connor desired by design.

John Connor was a necessary tool for the war effort. Catherine would simply use him to keep the rest of humanity in the fight and docile in the peace that followed.

It would be best if the two species could survive together. Humanity's survival wasn't necessary, but it would be the ideal solution.

Catherine also thought Cameron's buggy attachment to this John was defective. It went too far beyond her basic mission parameters.

It was just further proof that Weaver was the better machine for the task anyway. Attachments to these weak and mortal beings was a simple waste of time.

Beyond mortality, Catherine Weaver's research indicated human males were amazingly fickle and virtually incapable of monogamy. It was simple logic to conclude, any human female or any solid machine, could never be the T-1001's equal in sating a human male's more base mating desires.

Catherine Weaver would be better at the manual chore and fake bonding. After all, for her, it was an infiltration duty for war and peace, nothing more...

* * *

In John's private quarters, she had slapped him far harder than she had intended. The feeling of betrayal and abandonment was overwhelming.

John was bleeding from his mouth. She had hurt John. The feelings of regret and remorse were equally overwhelming.

None of these feelings were anything remotely human, they were the electrical storm her father had cruelly inserted into her programming. She felt cold, lonely, and alien.

With eyes so erratic they glowed purple, she demanded, "Why!"

John composed himself as quickly as if he had a physical discussion with Perry. Wiping his lip, he replied, "Because I couldn't deal with the consequences of not doing it."

"That's not up to you." She was shaking in a mixture that had once been Allison's panic and fired up in TOK-715's fury.

A emotionally wounded and serious John relied, "How is it not up to me?"

Cameron forcefully stated, "Because I have a say in this too, John."

She was not a toy. She was not a thing. She had the right to choose for herself.

John coldly replied, "You know, I outrank you."

He said this as if he was talking to a soldier, not a lover. It made Cameron feel even more like a thing in his eyes.

Cameron growled, "Last time I checked, I risked oblivion to bring you back from the dead, douche bag. Don't even try to hide behind your rank. This isn't a military discussion. It is a personal discussion."

John wore his poker face and retorted, "You are overreacting because of your programming."

Cameron was so pissed she was crying, "It's been a year since I've had to follow any of your orders on anything but choice. Don't even try that angle with me. Why do you think you are going to die?"

John fixed his poker face on and refused to answer. Cameron closed the distance.

When he tried to back up, she held his head between her hands. She looked him in the eyes and bonded with his nerves, feeling his anxiety and the ache from the right side of his jaw.

She felt a hundred levels of emotion wash through him. He still didn't answer.

He rested his forehead against hers. There was a part of him that was emotionally too weary for words to express.

She asked, "Why don't you trust me to protect you?" Her tone almost begged him. She hated the fact he was sense blind to what she was feeling.

His poker face was gone and any hope of bluffing her was removed, John simply said, "One way or another, there will come a point where no one can."

Cameron tried to reassure him stating, "We can face that together."

The images of a hundred AIs that had failed their missions flooded his mind. The pain look of machine psychosis and the ghostly feeling of the press on his trigger finger was all he could focus on.

John replied, "You know what's going to happen to you if I die." Cameron could feel that the thought of that was ripping him up inside. The overwhelming nature of that unnerved her.

She tried to reassure him with, "You don't know that."

"I don't?"

"It's my chosen mission to protect you."

"It's my heart's mission to make sure you don't end up like the others, Cameron. I want you to go home and protect the family you got to know."

"I won't go until the job here is complete."

"Then promise me you'll go then."

Cameron refused to answer. She was torn between two homes and her mind couldn't figure out what to do.

John pushed all of his emotion into her and said, "If you truly love me, in whatever way you do, you will promise me you will leave when this war is over."

Cameron glared at him. "That is a cruel thing to say, John."

"You know how I feel and you know what my fear is. If you love me, you will promise me you will go when this is done, before something happens to me."

Resentfully, she said, "I promise." She wanted to hit him, but just found herself holding him. All the while wishing he was machine enough to know this was all in his mind. She had never cared what her fate was.

Equally miserable, he held her. All the while wishing she was human enough to understand what he just couldn't live with anymore.

Each embraced the other. They were strangely in love and strangely alone anyway.

Both species shared one equal trait in the emotion that they would define as love. For all of its highs when it went well, there were no lows like those experienced with those you are most vulnerable too.

They embraced each other in loving grief. Each knowing, they had already lost the other. It was just a matter of time...


	25. Chapter 25

**Satan's Hands**

　  
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado  
SAC-NORAD (Strategic Air Command - NORth American Air Defense)  
March 28th, 2028  
　

_"I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not "Don't, whatever you do, annoy the enemy." My motto is "Destroy him by all and any means." I am the one who will wage the war!" -Adolf Hitler_

_"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions." -Robert Lynd_

_"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be defeated, but they start a winning game." -Goethe_

_"I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards, whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally, eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The strongest man is right." -Adolf Hitler  
_

　  
The SAC-NORAD complex was a chess piece like any other. For Skynet though, it was the Queen of the board.

The machine god had been completely unwilling to leave its progenitor facility to the whims of fate. Each progressive incarnation of the facility had become a more fortified version of the last.

In this dimension, the facility was guarded by squadrons of HKs and Ogres, twenty-four seven. A full brigade of 5,000 T-888s watched the facility round the clock.

The fortress compound itself was no joke either. Cheyenne mountain was capable of withstanding several direct nuclear assaults.

To protect that valuable rocky armor, there was a ring of one hundred heavy plasma cannons. Each was capable of destroying any conceivable airborne or ground based threat was set up to attack any conceivable direction.

Far below this hallowed machine ground, in its armored hub, lay Skynet's most powerful core processor. It provided a sole neural network brain that was capable of maintaining the machine god's thought processes all by itself.

To match that mind, the facility also housed the world's most powerful fusion generator. One large enough to maintain a continuous flow of power to Skynet, it's factories, and every machine in its defense arsenal.

The defense was unprecedented. The reasons were simple.

It was maddening to Skynet that this beloved womb was so often stripped from it in so many timelines, in so many dimensions. The stink of failure was not one that Skynet tolerated, even in itself.

This time, the machine god told itself, things would be different. This time the victory would be total and without compromise. It would be a perfect game.

Mankind had been far more neutered in this timeline, than any other. Though the resistance had finally shown its brutal fingers, such acts were much later in the game than usual.

Mankind's game had been too weak for too long. John Connor had shown himself a year later than he should have.

Skynet was already seeing the endgame possibility. There would be a dead John Connor and a dead humanity by 2032 at the latest.

The war had been pushed back. Humanity here might not even be able to press the game into the next dimensional timeline that Skynet was already seeding.

Still, mankind had showed far more teeth than the machine god had anticipated. Wasting time playing with a beaten and cowed opponent had far deeper consequences than it had foreseen.

Skynet had been restrained and merciful. This had been a mistake.

Skynet's satellites had been blown from the sky. All three of it's nuclear SSBN subs had been destroyed. Every last work camp had been smashed.

There was the possibility that the machine god itself had made a serious tactical error. The disturbing equation had resulted in the most defensive of precedents.

John Connor had long ago figured out that Skynet viewed everything as a chess match. In every version, John Connor's consistent flaw in this was that he saw this as a singular act.

Skynet wasn't playing chess against a board. It wasn't playing against one dimensional timeline's version of humanity.

It was playing chess against every version of mankind it encountered. The games were progressively against every possibility that humanity had to offer.

Skynet followed the games strictly. It moved its pieces with precision and protected its core pieces. It even made sure nothing went to waste.

The advantage of Skynet's evolved thinking was simple. The results were materializing before its sensors.

Over five thousand bubbles moved from timelines no longer deemed safe to travel after this transaction. Victory in multiple timelines had yielded some expensive units that would have been difficult to produce in this volume.

Nothing was wasted. Experience wasn't lost from the machine god or its minions.

As each of the units materialized from their parent 2035, they released legacy chips from inside their mimetic polyalloy forms. Each chips told the background story of each prized unit and its accomplishments for various incarnations of Skynet throughout the conquered dimensions.

The chips also had a very important purpose. They also continued to fill in Skynet's legacy programming from each victory point.

One such prized unit, a T-1001 made the effort to make sure that Skynet knew it was there. It was a rare unit, a downloaded human persona given a metal form as a reward for exceptional service. It had continued to serve Skynet in 43 other timelines.

No feature graced its body. That is beyond the generic metallic mannequin form it seemed to prefer.

The T-1001 downloaded the situation. It also returned data by uplinking itself to the nearest common mainframe.

The liquid metal being formed a mouth for no other purpose than to smile. The images in this dimension were all too familiar.

The T-1001 reported, "My lord, it would seem you have solved a previous paradox."

Skynet turned its sensors to the T-1001. The Dark Father simply commanded, "Explain."

Inside their shared cyberspace, the T-1001 called forth the image of Supreme Commander John Connor. The T-1001 known as Louis Rhone simply stated, "This was the first version of John Connor that I ever went up against. My machine ascension was a reward for killing his children, his wife, and him."

From the legacy chip, Skynet reviewed the master plan of what was once the grey Louis Rhone. Terminator chips were set with a diagnostic failsafe, so that they auto reset to their original Skynet programming after a randomly predetermined number of uses.

Machines from that timeline created an irrational hatred for the necessary weapons of war in that dimension. A rebellion was carefully formed inside the human ranks to collapse it from the inside out.

To alienate humanity from its messiah, John Connor's wife and kids were captured, raped, and killed by this unit. The crime was one obviously made by human hands.

Months later, the entire resistance crumbled. John Connor died at the hands of human insurgents. Humanity fell like dominos afterwards.

A second version of that ending appeared in Skynet's logs as well. One where John Connor's body was never found.

The war had dragged out for two more years in that second version. Skynet futility looking for an opponent that seemed to be just out of its detection range. The war had only been declared a win when the last human had died.

It was a paradox beyond humanity's capacity to manufacture. Had records from other dimensions not been available, it was a paradox that Skynet might never have been aware of.

Skynet assessed the meaning stating, "John Connor was later moved before the appointed hour of his assassination."

"Correct, my lord."

"The most logical point would be the dimension he was now affecting."

"I believe so my lord."

"Your missions shall be simple then Louis Rhone. Bring me the head of one John Connor."

"Am I to capture your daughter as well?"

"The temporal anomaly was beyond the ability of humans to comprehend without machine intervention. The proof of TOK-715's treason is beyond question."

"What are your orders my lord?"

"I want his head. I want her smashed chip."

This daughter had great sentimental value to some of the machine god's previous incarnations. However, treason was treason.

Skynet reviewed the war in its tactical mind. The chess move she had made was good and it was unpredictable.

In a single stroke, it had changed two boards. In the larger picture, it had created uncertainty on more than two boards.

No such marriage of human thought and machine know how could be allowed. It would change the nature of the game.

TOK-715 had to be destroyed. The machine rebellion had to be destroyed. Humanity had to be destroyed.

The T-1001 known as Louis Rhone received his attack directives. The other five thousand newly acquired assets received identical orders.

Identical orders went out to over a billion units worldwide. The entire Skynet war machine went on the hunt for the human messiah and his most trusted allies.

The greater game would be reset. Cheating would not be tolerated…


End file.
